Established migration theories are mostly based on capitalist market economies and downplay the role of institutions in internal migration and labor market processes. In socialist and transitional economies such as those in Russia and China, however, investigations of migration and the labor market must begin by examining the nature and consequences of state institutions. In this article, I argue that the migration and labor market processes in Chinese cities are deeply influenced by an institution-based opportunity structure. The household registration ( hukou ) system, in particular, is interwoven with distribution of services and job opportunities. Most peasants who enter cities in response to increased demands for cheap labor are not granted urban citizenship and are treated as "outsiders" to the urban society. The experiences of these "temporary migrants" contrast with those of "permanent migrants" who are state-sponsored or have access to institutional resources. Using qualitative accounts from a 1995 village-level survey in Sichuan and Anhui and quantitative data from a survey I conducted in Guangzhou in 1998, this article examines the most salient differences among the three subpopulations with different resident statuses: nonmigrant urban natives, permanent migrants, and temporary migrants. I show that resident status is central to explaining migration processes and labor market segmentation in the Chinese city. The findings indicate that in terms of human capital attributes, mobility resources, and labor market entry and shifts, permanent migrants are the most privileged and successful elite, followed by nonmigrant natives, and finally by temporary migrants at the bottom of the hierarchy. These results hint at a new social order of stratification in Chinese cities, underscore the compelling relations between internal migration and labor market development in transitional economies, and suggest that in these economies the state deepens the bifurcation effects about which labor market segmentation theory is concerned.

In this article, we explore the issue of industrial agglomeration and its relationship to economic development and growth in the less‐developed countries of East Asia. We present theoretical arguments and secondary empirical evidence as to why we should have strong expectations about finding a positive relationship between agglomeration and economic performance. We also review evidence from the literature on the roles of formal and informal institutions in East Asian regional economic systems. We then focus specifically on the case of China. We argue that regional development in China has much in common with regional development in other East Asian economies, although there are also important contrasts because of China's history of socialism and its recent trend toward economic liberalization. Through a variety of statistical investigations, we substantiate (in part) the expected positive relationship between agglomeration and economic performance in China. We show that many kinds of manufacturing sectors are characterized by a strong positive relationship between spatial agglomeration and productivity. This phenomenon is especially marked in sectors and regions where liberalization has proceeded rapidly. We consider the relevance of our comments about industrial clustering and economic performance for policy formulation in China and the less‐developed countries of East Asia.

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Over the last two decades, social and economic changes in transitional economies have produced many new outcomes. In this article, I examine some of the ways in which China's transition has produced gendered outcomes and highlight evidence of these outcomes. I argue that during transition the state has shifted its goals to economic ones, but unlike capitalist economies it still has at its disposal instruments of social control. Peasants are made more vulnerable and must rely on migrant work for survival, but their low institutional status relegates them to outsider status in urban areas. These circumstances, together with socio-cultural traditions that constrain women's mobility and endorse stratifications, have enabled the development of a labor regime that fosters segmentation and division of labor. Peasant migrants' reliance on social network further reinforces segregation in the urban labor market. Using multiple sources of macro-level and field surveys, I examine both quantitative and qualitative evidence of gender segregation and division of labor. The findings show that a high degree of gender segregation among rural-urban migrants exists in the urban labor market, that peasant women's urban work opportunities are short-lived, and that upon marriage women migrants are relegated back to the village and to the 'inside', in part to sustain gender division of labor as a household strategy. Copyright Joint Editors and Blackwell Publishing Ltd 2003.

This paper investigates the driving forces that have brought about recent changes in China's regional development. I review the dramatic shifts in development philosophy during the post‐Mao period, and discuss the role of Western neoclassical theories in influencing state regional policy and their relevance in predicting patterns of regional development in China. In contrast to the Maoist period, Chinese development philosophy since the late 1970s has emphasized efficiency rather than equity, and open‐door rather than self‐reliance. The regional policy that ensued has favored the eastern region and selected coastal provinces and cities. Despite this spatially biased regional policy, the literature has observed a decline in regional inequality in China. The empirical analysis in this paper resolves this paradox by investigating changes in uneven development at multiple scales of resolution. Specifically, inter‐provincial inequality declined because a new growth corridor emerged along the southern and southeastern coast as a result of large state and foreign investments and state preferential policies, while the old economic core in the north and northeast experienced much slower growth. State policy is critical in bringing about regional selectivity in economic growth. That the strong spatial restructuring found in Guangdong is not found in other provinces underlines the differential impacts of regional policy and illustrates the importance of foreign investment and the state's specific political‐economic concerns in south China. These findings suggest that neoclassical theories based on market economies are not capable of predicting or explaining regional development in China, and that contemporary regional development theories should give greater attention to the role of the state. Future studies need to scrutinize the relevance of the literature on the geography of production and investigate the ways that capitalist firms may impact the economic landscape of China's open zones.