1949 and the first Constitution in 1954. In sharp contrast to these promises, system hukou “the made it possible to bind rural population in a subaltern position on land it did not own China’s and could not (Cheng and Selden 1999: 668). I argue that this form of social and leave” economic control is unprecedented in China history. Ironically, Mao Zedong liked to compare himself to the greatest leaders from Chinese antiquity while slandering their governments as famous 1945 universally “feudalistic.” Mao’s poem asks who was the greatest leader in Chinese history, comparing himself favorably to the emperor Tang Taizong. It is indeed very appropriate to analyze the Maoist system in hukou historical context in comparison to the system implemented under Tang Taizong to truly huji appreciate how unprecedented the current system of social control is. Compared to Maoist China, Tang dynasty society under the emperor Tang Taizong in many ways exhibited greater social mobility, and this is partly due to the differences between the and systems. While the hukou huji Maoist system binds rural peasants to the land forcing them to work at subsistence levels, hukou the ancient Chinese never pursued a policy of modified slavery that bound peasants to manors such as with serfdom in medieval Europe. On the contrary, Chinese society has never once implemented a large-scale intrusive mode of systematic slavery, but instead had limited numbers of slaves expressed always in an extrusive fashion: as punishment for crimes by citizens (Patterson 1982:42–43). This is fundamentally different from feudalism in Europe, and even among neighbors in Asia, such as Koryo Korea and Shogunate Japan, which did employ slavery not limited to criminal punishment (Patterson 1982:42). Instead, the peasant farmers of Tang dynasty China owned a percentage of the land they farmed, could inherit land from their relatives, and were free persons able to move away from their land. The Tang
1949 and the first Constitution in 1954. In sharp contrast to these promises, “the hukou system made it possible to bind China’s rural population in a subaltern position on land it did not own and could not leave” (Cheng and Selden 1999: 668). I argue that this form of social and economic control is unprecedented in China history. Ironically, Mao Zedong liked to compare himself to the greatest leaders from Chinese antiquity while slandering their governments as universally “feudalistic.” Mao’s famous 1945 poem asks who was the greatest leader in Chinese history, comparing himself favorably to the emperor Tang Taizong. It is indeed very appropriate to analyze the Maoist hukou system in historical context in comparison to the huji system implemented under Tang Taizong to truly appreciate how unprecedented the current system of social control is. Compared to Maoist China, Tang dynasty society under the emperor Tang Taizong in many ways exhibited greater social mobility, and this is partly due to the differences between the hukou and huji systems. While the Maoist hukou system binds rural peasants to the land forcing them to work at subsistence levels, the ancient Chinese never pursued a policy of modified slavery that bound peasants to manors such as with serfdom in medieval Europe. On the contrary, Chinese society has never once implemented a large-scale intrusive mode of systematic slavery, but instead had limited numbers of slaves expressed always in an extrusive fashion: as punishment for crimes by citizens (Patterson 1982:42–43). This is fundamentally different from feudalism in Europe, and even among neighbors in Asia, such as Koryo Korea and Shogunate Japan, which did employ slavery not limited to criminal punishment (Patterson 1982:42). Instead, the peasant farmers of Tang dynasty China owned a percentage of the land they farmed, could inherit land from their relatives, and were free persons able to move away from their land. The Tang
hk_ipo_study_10.24.13.docx