Urbanisation under strict control

Sun Sheng Han () and Ning Yan ()

Chapter 5 in Institutions, Culture and the Chinese City, 2025, pp 88-110 from Edward Elgar Publishing

Abstract: Chapter 5 examines the channels through which national strategies, policies and programmes flowed to the Chinese cities under Mao's leadership. Following in the footsteps of the former Soviet Union, Mao chose a pathway for China's industrialisation centred on developing heavy industries. Strict population and resource control measures, such as the household registration system and rationing coupons, ensured the implementation of a low-cost industrialisation strategy and led to rapid industrial growth without urbanisation. Central government planning utilised work units (danwei) to organise production, distribution and limited services, creating danwei compounds in Chinese cities. National development policies and initiatives, top leaders’ directives on urban projects, and large-scale campaigns worked together to shape the Chinese cities of the Mao Era. They were productive cities, characterised by the dominance of proletarians whose mission was to produce industrial goods rather than to enjoy life. Mao endorsed the Daqing Model as an exemplary proletarian city. It can be argued that Mao's policy of prioritising urban industry was pro-urban in the Chinese context. Nevertheless, placing heavy industrial development, low-level urbanisation, and productive investment ahead of urban services and facilities was anti-urban when benchmarked against Western urban theories. On a regional scale, Mao allocated significant resources to developing inland cities in the 1950s. The Third-Line Construction policy, introduced for national defence in the 1960s and 1970s, effectively slowed down the growth of cities along the East Coast and contributed to China's overall counter-urbanisation trend.

Keywords: Household registration system; Danwei; Daqing Model; Productive city; Inland cities; Counter-urbanisation (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
ISBN: 9781035312429
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