Sinofsky: Restricting rural migrant movement enabled China's economic system to work
Steven Sinofsky · The Lawyerly Society vs. The Engineering State: Who Owns the Future? · Oct 6, 2025 · at 5:43
a16z Board Partner Steven Sinofsky analyzes China's population mobility controls and their impact on its manufacturing economy.
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“In the factories in Shenzhen, there are the rural people, and they're not allowed to just move. Like, they can temporarily relocate for work, and then the state sort of requires them to go back, and in a sense, they are forced to repatriate what they earned as a salary in the rural community. And so I do think that some of the things that are, but that also is a huge benefit. Like, it's an immense benefit. It's what enabled their whole system to work.”
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