Zhan Haite
In 2012, Zhan (now 17) became an unlikely crusader against the country's draconian residence registration system, the hukou, a bureaucratic knot tying hundreds of millions of migrant workers to their rural hometowns.
Zhan went to kindergarten, primary school and middle school in Shanghai where she has lived with her family since 2002. Yet she was told she could not take the national college entrance exam in the city as she was not a permanent resident, She was advised to attend a vocational school or return to her ancestral Jiangxi province instead, where opportunities are scarce.
Instead, Zhan decided to speak out. She organised a protest in front of Shanghai's education bureau, and posted dissenting messages online. Her family was briefly evicted. Local authorities threw her father in jail.
Yet Zhan's message was well-timed – hukou reform had recently risen to the top of the national agenda – and state-run media outlets began to take notice. Zhan was allowed to pen an op-ed in the China Daily newspaper, which ran under the headline Teen Girl Makes Case for Change.
Shanghai, China
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