Industry Feeding Agriculture in Turn: Urbanization, Redistribution, and Social Stability in China.

Most regimes respond to the threat of urban unrest by biasing policies to favor cities since urban denizens, due to their proximity to each other and the seat of power, are more politically powerful than rural residents. China, on the other hand, has focused on slowing the pace of migration to its most unstable cities and even begun subsidizing rural areas. What accounts for this anomalous shift? I argue that there exists a self-undermining secondary effect of urban bias that has been previously absent from the literature: it encourages urbanization, leading to larger cities in the future and increasing the long-term risk to the regime. China fears "Latin Americanization"—slums, crime, and regime instability—and hopes to moderate movement to cities by making agriculture more economically attractive. This paper supports the argument with two empirical sections. First, a narrative of Chinese urbanization and reform policy shows that stability, especially in cities, has been a dominant concern. Second, a statistical analysis of the distribution of Chinese fiscal transfers shows that they are directed to areas that are unstable and that export laborers. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]