Urban bias, migration control and rural land policy: the case of Hukou in China.

The article develops a political economy model to analyze how urban-biased governments balance retaining urban support with expanding industrial rents, focusing on policies related to rural land ownership and rural–urban migration. The model distinguishes between unrestricted ownership rights (UOR), allowing private land transfer, and restricted ownership rights (ROR), where land use is tied to rural residency, affecting migration costs. Using China as a case study, the model shows that increased urbanization tends to encourage adoption of UOR by raising the marginal productivity of migrant labor, while increased urban productivity can lead to the opposite effect by raising urban consumption costs and migration pressures, prompting retention of ROR. The analysis highlights that the income share of rural labor, urban residents’ political power, and urban labor elasticity critically influence land policy choices, and it interprets recent Chinese reforms as a gradual shift toward easing migration restrictions without fully removing land ownership constraints.