Income Distribution Commons^™

The Hukou And Land Tenure Systems As Two Middle Income Traps—The Case Of Modern China [Post-Print], Guanzhong James Wen, Jinwu Xiong

Faculty Scholarship

China’s prevailing hukou (household registration) system and land tenure system seem to be very different in their applications. In fact, they both function to deny the exit right of rural residents from a rural community. Under these systems, rural residents are not allowed to freely exit from collectives if they do not want to lose their entitlements, such as their rights to using collectively owned land and their land-based properties. Farmers are neither allowed to sell their houses to outsiders, nor allowed to sell to outsiders their rights to contracting a piece of land from the collective where their households …