Post-Mao China: A Two-class urban society in the making

In its urgent and strong desire to industrialize the country quickly, the Chinese Maoist state segmented the society along industrial/agricultural or urban/rural lines. This was achieved by use of a totalitarian system of social control, the cornerstone of which was the household registration system. The farm sector was not only squeezed to generate a surplus for industry; peasants were also denied many citizenship rights, including the freedom to move. Post-Mao economic reforms especially the decollectivization programme and the concomitant loosening of migration restrictions, have substantially altered the situation. Millions of farm labourers, displaced by the increased productivity in the countryside, have flocked to cities in search of jobs. Because most of them lack proper urban household registration status, these migrants are confined to low-skilled jobs and do not have access to most urban social services. In many ways, the relatively homogeneous social structure in pre-reform cities has been replaced by a more polarized two-class social structure, still largely based on household registration status. Like their counterparts in other countries, most peasant migrants live precariously on the informal economy and stay at the bottom of the urban socioeconomic structure. This has created a number of new problems that have longer term social and political implications for the country.