外來兒童就學面臨北京門檻

Yang Yinli, like millions of migrant workers in China, sent her first son to live with his grandparents in the countryside. It was a choice she would bitterly regret.

和中國其他衆多農民工一樣，楊茵莉（音譯）當年把第一個兒子送到了鄉下，和祖父母住在一起。這個決定無疑讓她後悔不已。

No one was watching the lively six-year-old when he was struck and killed by a truck roaring through the steep village roads. Heartbroken, Ms Yang bore a second son and vowed to raise him in Beijing, stuffing a crib into her tiny shop and keeping a close eye as the toddler played on the pavements.

一輛在陡峭的鄉村公路上飛馳的卡車撞上了這個活潑的6歲兒童，奪走了他的生命。事發時，沒有大人在看着他。心碎的楊女士後來又生下一個兒子，發誓要將他帶在身邊撫養。她在小店中塞進了一張兒童牀，剛學走路的孩子在人行道上玩耍時，她會小心地看着他。

But new regulations announced this year may force her to send her son, now five, away to be educated. The regulations, which in effect prevent migrant children from entering the first year at Beijing schools, triggered weeks of protests this spring by crowds of anguished parents.

然而，根據今年公佈的新規定，爲了孩子上學，她可能不得不把今年已經5歲的孩子送走。這些規定實際上阻止外來兒童進入北京小學的一年級就讀。今年春天，新規發佈後，許多悲痛的父母聚集在一起，舉行了爲期數週的抗議活動。

The battle faced by migrants for a basic education in Beijing and other major urban centres shows how China is struggling to accommodate the millions flowing to its cities despite a national policy of stimulating urbanisation. “His father could move with him but then what about me? I would still be far from the child,” Ms Yang says, her voice cracking.

外來人口在北京和其他大城市爲爭取讓子女能夠接受基礎教育所做的鬥爭表明，中國雖然出了推進城市化的國家政策，但要容納流進城市的龐大人羣非常困難。楊女士嘶啞着嗓子說：“他爸爸可以和他一起走，我怎麼辦？我還得和孩子分開。”

About 40 per cent of the primary schoolchildren in Beijing lack a city hukou , the official household residency permit that grants access to social services, including education, healthcare and the right to buy homes. Nonetheless, in recent years they have been permitted to attend primary school in the city, a concession that has allowed many migrant couples to keep young children by their side. This school year alone, 470,800 non-Beijing hukou — or migrant — students attended primary and middle school in Beijing.

在北京，大約40%的小學生沒有城市戶口。所謂戶口，是指一種官方的家庭居住許可證明，用以獲得包括教育、醫療及購房權利在內的社會服務。不過，近年來外來兒童已被允許就讀北京市的小學。政策上的這一讓步，令許多外來務工人員可以將年幼的子女帶在身邊。在本學年，北京中小學非京籍學生（即外來務工人員子女）就有47.08萬人。

A relic of the famines during early Communist rule, the hukou system was introduced in the 1950s to keep the peasantry out of cities where food was more plentiful. It has gradually been relaxed as a flood of workers moved out of rural villages to the factories in cities along the prosperous coast but migrants still remain second-class citizens in many of the cities where they have settled.

作爲共產黨執政早期饑荒年代遺留下的產物，中國的戶籍制度從上世紀50年代開始實施，將農民隔離在食品更加豐富的城市之外。隨着大量務工人員走出農村，進入沿海繁榮城市的工廠，中國的戶籍制度已逐步放開。不過，在許多他們已經安家的城市，外來務工人員依然是二等市民。

Official statistics show that 55 per cent of Chinese, or 749m people, now live in cities, up from 19 per cent in 1980 at the dawn of market reforms, although the real number is probably higher — and still rising. A government think-tank has estimated it would cost about $100bn per year to integrate another 400m people into the cities over the coming decade.

中國官方統計數字顯示，中國目前城市人口爲7.49億人，佔總人口的55%，遠高於1980年剛開始市場改革時的19%。不過，實際的數字有可能更高，而且依然在增長之中。據一家政府智庫估計，要想在今後十年讓另外4億人融入城市，每年需花費大約1000億美元。

Reforms that allow migrants to establish residency in provincial cities have been accompanied by tighter restrictions for some, mostly hitting those who have moved to the biggest cities, or those who often change jobs and residences.

中國最近對戶籍制度所做的改革，允許外來人口落戶一些省會城市，同時一些城市卻收緊了限制，主要受影響的是已經遷進一線城市的流動人口，或經常換工作和居住地點的人們。

“If we were a market economy, the problem of population would sort itself out and resources would flow more evenly. But China is not a fully market economy and a lot of resources are still concentrated in the hands of certain cities,” says Hu Xingdou, an economist who studies migrant issues at the Beijing Institute of Technology. “Under these circumstances we can never have the free movement of people.”

北京理工大學(Beijing Institute of Technology)研究外來務工人員問題的經濟學家胡星斗表示：“如果我們實行的是市場經濟，人口問題會自動解決，資源會更平均地流動。然而，中國並不是完全的市場經濟，大量資源仍集中在一些特定城市。在這種情況下，我們永遠都不會實現人的自由遷徙。”

Recent policies — such as the rules on education — seek to push migrants out of the most attractive and high-wage places into provincial cities where there is a glut of new housing. Those policies, a reversal of several decades of population flow into the biggest cities, force migrant parents to once again to face the choice of confiding young children to the care of elderly and uneducated grandparents or to enrol them in distant boarding schools.

最近的政策（比如有關教育方面的規定）試圖將外來務工人員從最具吸引力、工資水平最高的地區，引導向蓋了大量新樓房的省會城市。這些政策與幾十年來人口流向一線城市的大趨勢相背離，迫使流動家庭父母再次面臨選擇：要麼將年幼的子女託付給年事已高、沒有文化的祖父母，要麼讓他們就讀偏遠的寄宿學校。

In May hundreds of migrant parents staged daily protests at education offices in Chaoyang district in Beijing. Videos of one protest show burly policemen dragging off weeping mothers while the crowd chants “It’s not right!”

今年5月，數百名來京務工的孩子家長連日在北京市朝陽區教育管理機構舉行抗議活動。其中一場抗議的視頻中，身材魁梧的警察拖着一些正在哭泣的女人，人羣在喊着口號。

Anger is particularly strong because many migrant parents paid into Beijing’s social security system following tightened regulations issued last year, only to be stymied by additional requirements announced in late April. Those include rental documentation that migrants crowded into temporary housing cannot provide.

去年政府發佈了一些更嚴格的規定後，許多流動兒童父母在北京繳了社保，沒想到今年4月底又出了新規定，讓人們尤其感到憤怒。這些新規定包括要求提供各種租房證明，對於擠在臨時性住房中的外來務工人員來說，他們無法提供這類材料。

The Beijing Municipal Education Bureau referred questions on specific policies to the district. The district bureau said it was too busy preparing for college entrance exams to answer the FT’s faxed questions.

北京市教育局將詢問有關具體政策的問題轉給了朝陽區方面，而朝陽區教委當時表示忙於迎接高考，無暇答覆英國《金融時報》通過傳真提出的問題。

At pickup time at one Chaoyang district pre-school, parents exchanged notes. “I think it is unfair,” said Ms Zheng from Fujian Province, the mother of seven-year old twins who were born in Beijing. “Why should migrant children be separated out?” She declined to give her full name for fear of damaging the boys’ chances of somehow entering school.

在朝陽區一所學前學校，家長們在等待接孩子時交流意見。來自福建的鄭女士有一對七歲的雙胞胎，兩個孩子就出生在北京。她說：“我覺得不公平。爲什麼外來人口的子女就應該被區別對待？”由於擔心會影響到兩個孩子或許有可能的在京上學機會，這位女士拒絕透露全名。

Ms Zheng had hoped regulations would evolve to allow her twins to someday attend high school in the city. Currently, children can only take the university entrance exam where their hukou is registered, exiling city kids to provincial towns hundreds of miles away just as they hit their teenage years. Grades plummet and it is common for children who were decent students in the cities to drop out once they are far from their parents. Sexual abuse and delinquency are growing concerns.

鄭女士希望政策變化會讓她的雙胞胎能夠在某一天入讀北京的中學。目前，中國的中學生只能在戶口所在地參加高考。衆多城市小孩到了十幾歲時就得回到幾百英里以外的本省城市上學。一旦孩子們遠離父母，他們的學習成績可能會直線下降，城裏原本的好學生出現退學的現象也屢見不鮮。此外，兒童性侵害現象和青少年犯罪也日益令人擔憂。

Some desperate teens have made national headlines. In May a 12-year-old girl who had attended at least two years of school in Beijing before being sent back to a desolate village in Sichuan province killed herself and poisoned her grandmother with pesticide.

不時有一些絕望的少男少女成爲全國新聞焦點。今年5月，一名12歲的女孩用農藥給奶奶下毒後自殺。這名女孩曾在北京上過至少兩年學，之後被送回四川省偏遠的農村。

“It has a great impact on the children but our nation doesn’t think about this much,” says Prof Hu. “We say if the nation is unwilling to build an extra school in the cities today someday it will end up building an extra jail.”

胡星斗教授表示：“這會讓孩子們受到非常大的影響，國家對這個問題卻沒有考慮太多。我們說，今天國家不願在城市裏多修一所學校，他日就得多修一所監獄。”