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The Regulations on Household Registration bind peasants to rural hukou

On 9 January 1958 the PRC promulgated Regulations on Household Registration, creating a nationwide hukou system that classified citizens as rural or urban and tied grain, school, and legal residence to the register. In the causal graph this event weakens the driver Personal-Data Protection.

Sources: [1][2]

Read the full account

On 9 January 1958 the PRC promulgated Regulations on Household Registration, creating a nationwide hukou system that classified citizens as rural or urban and tied grain, school, and legal residence to the register. Mao’s government used it to stop ‘blind inflows’ to cities. During the subsequent famine, the same lock made flight a punishable act.

Context

Internal-passport logics existed in the Soviet example. Public security organs kept the files. Later reform-era hukou is not this 1958 instrument.

Shared responsibility is part of The Regulations on Household Registration bind peasants to rural hukou. Naming Mao Zedong does not delete co-authors, institutions, or later transmitters. The lag from 1958-01-09 to any measured indicator is not treated as zero. Alternative explanations — weather, other armies, later statutes, or independent cultural change — remain live where the sources do not close them.

Why it matters

Complex (State Council plus police). High confidence on the statute date. It aggravated famine deaths without being the Leap itself.

Who was responsible

Contribution type and responsibility level for each recorded actor — not sole-author shorthand.

  • Mao Zedong

    Person

    Direct responsibility

    responsibility level 0.44 · verified

    Mao’s State Council issued the 1958 hukou regulations as population-control law. Public security and local governments ran the registers.

What changed

Fact → Driver → Indicator. Relationship strength orders the paths; it is not the observed indicator movement.

    1. FactThe Regulations on Household Registration bind peasants to rural hukou
    2. weakensDriverPersonal-Data Protection

    impact weight 0.45 · Effect from 9 January 1958 · verified

    A compulsory household register tied food, school, and movement to a recorded rural or urban status, weakening personal-data protection and locking people into famine zones.

Evidence

The sources behind this fact and its verification state.

Verified2 sources on file
  1. 1.Britannica — hukou household registrationEncyclopaedia Britannica · High credibility · verified
  2. 2.Regulations on Household Registration of the PRC, 9 January 1958 (English carrier)UNHCR Refworld / PRC statute reprint · High credibility · verified
What the sources establish

Refworld carries an English text of the 9 January 1958 regulations. Britannica independently explains hukou. The two URLs differ. No Factrail original register extract is offered.

Established: 9 January 1958 regulations created a binding hukou system under Mao’s government. Not established: that every later urban-rural gap is solely this text.

Later competitions, monuments, translations, UNESCO listings, museums, and adaptations are not converted into extra lifetime acts.

If a number is not in the two records named above, it is not supplied here.

Confidence is stated on the impact path, not hidden in adjectives. Mixed effects of The Regulations on Household Registration bind peasants to rural hukou are separate paths.

That reading is an impact-path choice, not a property stored on the Fact itself.

Causal path

How this event connects to drivers and indicators in the graph.

  1. ActorMao Zedong
  2. contributed toFactThe Regulations on Household Registration bind peasants to rural hukou
  3. weakensDriverPersonal-Data Protection

Cite this page

Factrail. (2026). The Regulations on Household Registration bind peasants to rural hukou. Factrail. https://factrail.ai/facts/cn-mao-hukou-1958

https://factrail.ai/facts/cn-mao-hukou-1958

Accessed 16 October 2026.

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