Off to the city

摘要

It was one of Mao Zedong's many big ideas, and thus far one of his most enduring. In the late 1950s, at the time of the "great leap forward", China established its hukou, or household registration system, which required people to live and work only where they were officially permitted to. For a government intent on running its economy according to a strict central plan, it was well to have people stay where they were told. For China's hundreds of millions of rural dwellers it made leaving their village nearly as difficult as leaving the country.