ABSTRACT
Throughout the 1950s China implemented a code of laws, regulations, and programs that formally differentiated residential groups in the service of controlling population movement and mobility and furthering state development priorities: the city over the countryside, industry over agriculture, state sector employees over collectivized villagers. The hukou system, which emerged full blown in the course of a decade, was integral to the collective transformation of the countryside, the restriction of urban migration, and the channeling of disproportionate resources to the state sector, industry, and the cities.
