Obtaining a Beijing Hukou Through a Separately Listed Quota
As a system with Chinese characteristics, hukou has always been an important consideration when people think about work, life, and settlement. Thirty years ago, our parents’ generation went to great lengths to convert rural hukou into urban hukou; now we go to great lengths for a Beijing hukou. Many things have changed, yet some things have not.
Fortunately, Beijing also issued its new hukou rules this year. Most of the content stayed the same, but the “separately listed quota” gave us an opportunity.
Interpretation of the Separately Listed Quota
Article 11: The following introduction projects are subject to separate planning:
high-end, precision, and advanced industries such as integrated circuits, artificial intelligence, and medical health that are prioritized by the municipal Party committee and government; key landing projects under the “Two Zones” construction; municipal-level “service package” enterprises; key tax-source, key introduced, key cultivated enterprises, and unicorn enterprises; and graduates with a bachelor’s degree or above from domestic universities ranked in the world’s top 200, or master’s graduates from Double First-Class construction disciplines;
The company needs to be qualified. In general, major companies are basically on the list, such as BAT, TMD, and many foreign enterprises.
The employee also needs to be qualified. For a bachelor’s degree or above from a world top-200 university, the officially recognized domestic schools are seven: Tsinghua University, Peking University, Fudan University, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Zhejiang University, University of Science and Technology of China, and Nanjing University. As for Double First-Class master’s programs, there are many more; see the Ministry of Education list. Many schools and majors do not match the list perfectly, so at that point you need to look at the explanations from the school and college, as well as cases from previous years. Since this was our first year, there were no previous cases, so we could only cross the river by feeling the stones. Our graduation major at Beihang University was “Computer Technology”, which does not perfectly match “Computer Science and Technology” on the list. But in practice, it was still counted as Double First-Class and met the settlement requirements.
Generally, campus hires at excellent companies basically meet the requirements. For example, among the 17 master’s graduates from domestic universities at my company this year, only 4 were not on the list. Fortunately, because there had previously been 2 hukou slots, the students who had drawn those slots could instead use the separately listed quota, freeing those 2 slots. Therefore 4 people shared those 2 slots. The final result was that the vast majority of people received hukou slots.
Also, because the separately listed quota refers to students who graduated within two years, besides our class of 2021, students from the classes of 2020 and 2019 could also participate. In the end, more than 40 people across the company used the separately listed quota.
Another important question everyone cares about is whether it is a 1-year quota or a 3-year quota.
The two types of settlement quotas require either half a year or three years of social insurance contributions. However, even for the half-year quota, by the time settlement is completed it basically takes nearly a year, so everyone still calls it a one-year quota.
Unlike previous quota types, the government does not restrict whether the separately listed quota is one-year or three-year; it leaves that to the company and graduates to negotiate. More conscientious companies, such as my company Amazon, let students choose for themselves. Of course everyone chose the one-year option.
But I have also heard that many companies, even familiar major companies such as Meituan and ByteDance, force the three-year option. Some even sign a five-year service-period agreement: after settlement is completed in three years, if you do not stay for five years, you have to compensate the company. The government’s intention is to save companies employment costs, but these companies’ behavior is really ugly. I sympathize with students at those companies, and there are quite a few of them. During the five-year service period, they are at the company’s mercy, their pay and benefits do not rise, and they cannot change jobs.
Settlement Process
Whether or not you use the separately listed quota, the settlement process is roughly the same. In our case, we handled the paperwork together with the two students who did not use the separately listed quota. The separately listed quota only added extra slots.
This process is for Beijing schools. Schools outside Beijing are similar; the differences may only be in the tripartite agreement and employment recommendation form, and they may require supplementary materials.
- Submit the employment recommendation form and other materials, such as copies of the graduation certificate and degree certificate, to the company. The company organizes them and submits them to the Human Resources and Social Security Bureau. (October of the first year after joining)
- The Human Resources and Social Security Bureau publishes the introduction list.
- Submit materials to the company again, such as copies of the hukou page and household homepage. After the company approves them, there will be an acceptance letter. (December of the first year after joining)
- Use the acceptance letter to fill in dispatch information on the school’s official website.
- Go to the school to collect the registration certificate, and handle file and hukou transfer-out procedures.
- Wait for the company to notify you in the second year. You will receive the settlement slip from the police station, and then you can place your hukou in the company’s collective hukou.
Sometimes the company above is not the company you signed with, but an intermediary company that handles various services for it.
For example, foreign companies may outsource these services to FESCO, and the final hukou will also be placed in FESCO’s collective hukou.
Careful students may notice that the steps above do not mention the tripartite agreement. That is right: the tripartite agreement is first signed by you, then by the company, and finally by the school. Some schools require the tripartite agreement to be fully signed before dispatch can be processed.
But our school did not have such a requirement, so whether the tripartite agreement was signed was not a big problem. I still made several trips and finished signing it, just in case it might be useful later.
Settlement Completed
Around April or May of the second year, once you have paid social insurance for more than half a year and meet the settlement requirements, you can submit your social insurance certificate. For friends using the three-year settlement route, you need to pay social insurance for three years.
Around the end of the second year, the municipal Human Resources and Social Security Bureau will centrally process settlement. We then receive the settlement slip from the police station where the collective hukou is located. At that point, we can go to the police station to settle the hukou and complete the final settlement process. For example, FESCO is handled by the Beijing Chaowai Street Police Station.
Timeline
September 2021: Submit the employment recommendation form and other materials, such as copies of the graduation certificate and degree certificate, to the company. The company organizes them and submits them to the Human Resources and Social Security Bureau.
The Human Resources and Social Security Bureau publishes the introduction list.
December 2021: Submit materials to the company again, such as copies of the hukou page and household homepage. After company approval, there will be an acceptance letter. (December of the first year after joining)
March 2022: Provide social insurance records.
February 2023: Take the settlement slip to the police station. FESCO is handled by the Beijing Chaowai Street Police Station.