This book is the first comprehensive examination of China's hukou (household registration) system. The hukou system registers and governs the 1.3 billion Chinese, while creating deep and rigid divisions and exclusions; in many domains the system determines how the Chinese live and shapes China's sociopolitical structure and socioeconomic development. This book shows that the system has made both positive and negative contributions to contemporary Chinese society: it has helped foster rapid economic growth and political stability, but also has reinforced social stratification,...

Analyzing Chinese history, politics, and economic development through the lens of labor allocation, Fei-Ling Wang examines the segmented nature of the worldOs largest workforce. He points to the rare coexistence of four _labor allocation patterns:_ the traditional family-based system, authoritarian state allocation, community-based labor markets, and the emerging national labor market. Bolstered by rich case-studies and primary source material, the author argues that the evolution of labor allocation, now driven by market forces, will profoundly influence China's political and economic...

Wang proposes and applies an innovative analytical framework to study the institutional continuity and changes in China. More specifically, this study examines and explains the peculiar premodernity and the profound modernization process of China. On the track of a state-led modernization, the dragon of China is found to be institutionally entering the nets of the market economy. An inquiry of China's labour allocation patterns and their changes serves as the indicator for the institutional analysis.

What does the rise of China represent, and how should the international community respond? With a holistic rereading of Chinese longue duree history, Fei-Ling Wang provides a simple but powerful framework for understanding the nature of persistent and rising Chinese power and its implications for the current global order. He argues that the Chinese ideation and tradition of political governance and world order--the China Order--is based on an imperial state of Confucian-Legalism as historically exemplified by the Qin-Han polity. Claiming a Mandate of Heaven to unify and govern the...