with almost all agricultural-type citizens resident in rural areas and all non-agricultural hukou type citizens resident in urban areas. After the reforms instituted by Deng Xiaoping and hukou the easing of movement restrictions, rural migrant laborers have increasingly entered the cities. Figure 1, taken from Chan (2009: 211), highlights these changes by comparing the composition in type of urban and rural populations between 1965 and 2000. The figure shows hukou de facto pyramids of four strata representing quartiles of income, with the widths scaled in proportion to estimated populations. de facto [Insert Figure 1] As Chan Karl Marx once remarked that the history of capitalism is a (2009) concludes, “if history of exploitation and suffering of the industrial proletariat . . . it may be reasoned that the history of the post-1949 industrialization in China has been one of exploitation and sacrifice of the The Mao-led CCP developed the system into a instrument of social hukou peasantry” (215). control that assigned immutable, hereditary status to all citizens, disenfranchising everyone of their right to migrate and rural residents from vital services and welfare entitlements such as employment, housing, food, water, sewage disposal, transportation, medical facilities, schools, subsidized health care, and retirement benefits (Cheng and Selden 1999; Chan 2009). Especially after the failure of the Great Leap Forward, the Mao-led CCP utilized the system to hukou extract resources at artificially low prices from the rural countryside, binding the peasant farmers to the land and forcing them to work at subsistence wages (or less in years of famine). While the system has weakened since the it remains in force today and is still the anchor of hukou 1980’s, system of social control (Chan 2009). China’s
with almost all agricultural-type hukou citizens resident in rural areas and all non-agricultural type hukou citizens resident in urban areas. After the reforms instituted by Deng Xiaoping and the easing of movement restrictions, rural migrant laborers have increasingly entered the cities. Figure 1, taken from Chan (2009: 211), highlights these changes by comparing the composition in hukou type of urban and rural de facto populations between 1965 and 2000. The figure shows pyramids of four strata representing quartiles of income, with the widths scaled in proportion to estimated de facto populations. [Insert Figure 1] As Chan (2009) concludes, “if Karl Marx once remarked that the history of capitalism is a history of exploitation and suffering of the industrial proletariat . . . it may be reasoned that the history of the post-1949 industrialization in China has been one of exploitation and sacrifice of the peasantry” (215). The Mao-led CCP developed the hukou system into a instrument of social control that assigned immutable, hereditary status to all citizens, disenfranchising everyone of their right to migrate and rural residents from vital services and welfare entitlements such as employment, housing, food, water, sewage disposal, transportation, medical facilities, schools, subsidized health care, and retirement benefits (Cheng and Selden 1999; Chan 2009). Especially after the failure of the Great Leap Forward, the Mao-led CCP utilized the hukou system to extract resources at artificially low prices from the rural countryside, binding the peasant farmers to the land and forcing them to work at subsistence wages (or less in years of famine). While the hukou system has weakened since the 1980’s, it remains in force today and is still the anchor of China’s system of social control (Chan 2009).
hk_ipo_study_10.24.13.docx