ABSTRACT
The Household Registration System (HRS), commonly referred to as the hukou system, has been China’s predominant mechanism for population management since its formal inception in 1958 [1]. The foundation was laid at the time of China’s ‘Great Leap Forward’, when the goals of its economy shifted towards the production of the heavy industries, such as energy, iron and steel. The new policies of the state led by Chairman Mao Zedong had halted agricultural production of traditional private farming and instead formed agricultural collectives which favoured industrialization. The hukou system was created as a social institution system that would support industrialization goals for China’s economy. It controlled migration and spatial hierarchies of the population, which in turn supported an artifi cial balance under the conditions of a dual economy by controlling fl ows of resources between cities and the countryside [2].
