Weaving together a large body of diverse empirical data and multidisciplinary theoretical literature, Kam Wing Chan analyzes Chinese urban population growth trends and official policies toward urbanization since 1949. Chan establishes that many features of Chinese urban growth are expected outcomes under a form of classical socialism designed to achieve rapid industrialization and argues that invisible walls of administrative measures on restricting rural-urban flows have served to reduce costs of urbanization generated by industrialization and have protected the urban population's interests. In the post-Mao era, he finds that the city gate has gradually been opened but many measures against rural householders have remained in force. Richly documented with Chinese- and English-language sources of urban development in China, this book develops a new interpretative model of the dynamics of socialist urbanization.