Population Classification and Two Types of Social Control in China and the DPRK

• In Event: Managed Pluralism in Communist and Post-Communist States

Abstract

Legibility of its population, according to Scott (1999), is crucial for modern statecraft, including those “high-modernist authoritarianism” such as China and North Korea in the 1950s and 1960s. At the same time, properly “classed” population, for Fitzpatrick (1993), was for communist regimes to recognize their allies and enemies, which applies to Soviet Russia in the 1920s and 1930s, as well as to its two followers. To what extent, then, did the population classification systems in China and North Korea manifest a Scottian process of state building or a Fitzpatrickian preparation for power struggle? Drawing on original archival research and existing literature, we suggest that the primary goal in China was state building whereas in North Korea it was personal power consolidation. In China, the population was divided between rural and urban residents and categorized into five classes. In North Korea, a standardized registration system classified its entire population into a complex 51 categories. This difference, we contend, reflects varying challenges faced by the new states. The immediate tasks for the ruling Chinese Communist Party were to ensure its monopoly of force and fiscal capacity, which were pursued by revolutionary-style campaigns that benefited from a relatively broad grouping of the population. In North Korea, the end of the Korean War witnessed factional struggles. The classification system under Kim Il Sung was aimed against opponents and the detailed categorization of his subjects facilitated population atomization. This study contributes to the literature on the politics of social classification by unpacking the differences among Communist regimes.

Authors

• Jung Eun Kim, Heidelberg University

• Juan Wang, McGill University