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This course analyzes China’s urbanization—a world-historical transformation critical to the country’s economic development—and uses urbanization as a lens to examine Chinese politics, economics, and society over the past century. Mao Zedong’s Chinese Communist Party was powered by peasants, yet pushed policies that ultimately starved tens of millions in the countryside while keeping urban areas fed. In China’s Reform Era, hundreds of millions of farmers left the countryside to build and reside in cities, joining the industrial and service sector labor force. Doing so required immense amounts of physical material, land, and labor from around the world, literally reshaping the globe and its economy. This class addresses a number of questions. What policies and politics shaped China’s urbanization? What is the range and variety of experience across China’s cities and rural areas versus urban ones? How is China shifting its development model today? What political and economic consequences should we expect to see in the wake of these changes? How has and will China’s urbanization reverberate around the world?