Why is China's household registration system so resilient, and why are migrant workers consistently excluded from equal urban welfare? By disaggregating the hukou and land components of the rural–urban dualist regime, this article argues that dualist land ownership, formalized in China's 1982 Constitution, perpetuates the hukou system and unequal welfare rights. On the one hand, dualist land ownership results in an abundance of low-cost, informal housing in urban villages. This reduces the cost of short-term labour reproduction and diminishes migrants’ demands for state-defined urban rights. On the other hand, dualist land ownership enables local governments to amass significant revenues from land sales. The prominence of land-based revenues prompts local governments to link urban welfare rights with formal property ownership and residency, obstructing substantive reforms to the hukou system. For comparison, this article highlights Vietnam, a communist country with a unitary land ownership system, which has made greater strides in reforming its household registration system.

中国的户籍管理制度为何如此牢固，移民打工者为何被持续排除在平等的城市福利之外？通过拆分城乡二元制的两个组成部分：户口和土地，本文提出，1982 年中国宪法所确立的土地二元所有制，是户籍制度和福利权利不平等得以持续存在的原因。一方面，土地二元所有制导致城中村出现大量低价的非正式住房，这降低了短期劳动力再生产的成本，减少了打工者对国家定义的城市权利的需求。另一方面，土地二元所有制使地方政府能够从土地出让中获得大量收入，土地出让收入的重要性促使地方政府将城市福利权的分配与公民的正式产权和居住状况绑定，从而阻碍了户籍制度的实质性改革。作为比较，本文讨论了越南这个共产党领导的国家，它拥有非二元、统一的土地所有制，并在户籍制度改革上取得了更多进展。