Rural Land Takings Law In Modern China

A contextualized and critical reading of the origin and evolution of China's rural land takings law.

This paper is motivated by the emphasis on secure property rights as a determinant of economic development in recent literature. The authors use village and household level information from about 800 villages throughout China to explore whether legal reform increased protection of land rights against unauthorized reallocation or expropriation with below-average compensation by the state. The analysis provides nation-wide evidence on a sensitive topic. The authors find positive impacts, equivalent to increasing land values by 30 percent, of reform even in the short term. Reform originated in villages where democratic election of leaders ensured a minimum level of accountability, pointing toward complementarity between good governance and legal reform. The paper explores the implications for situations where individuals and groups hold overlapping rights to land.

This paper is motivated by the emphasis on secure property rights as a determinant of economic development in recent literature. The authors use village and household level information from about 800 villages throughout China to explore whether legal reform increased protection of land rights against unauthorized reallocation or expropriation with below-average compensation by the state. The analysis provides nation-wide evidence on a sensitive topic. The authors find positive impacts, equivalent to increasing land values by 30 percent, of reform even in the short term. Reform originated in villages where democratic election of leaders ensured a minimum level of accountability, pointing toward complementarity between good governance and legal reform. The paper explores the implications for situations where individuals and groups hold overlapping rights to land.

This book provides a thorough analysis of the evolution of land property rights and transfer mechanism during the transition of the Chinese society from being a traditional self-sustaining agricultural society to a modern commercialized agricultural society. It provides empirical proof for complicated property rights theories and a solution and path for land capitalization. It discloses that in practice, land ownership may not be the essence and knot of the problem, and that the implementation of land property rights really matters. The book also provides a series of pragmatic solutions and measures to improve the current land law system and land policy in China. It stresses the importance of a pragmatic research methodology that is based on arguments on real life research and evidence, which may help promote a more grounded research atmosphere in the Chinese academia. Contents:Implementation and Protection of Land Property Rights in the Context of Urbanization:IntroductionCurrent Land Policies and Their Implementation: Results and EvaluationLocal Experiences and Policy Innovation: Cases and AnalysisSuggestions on Policy Improvement and Law AmendmentImplementation and Protection of Property Rights in Collective Construction Land — Involving the Issue of "Sub-Rights" Rural Housing:Introduction and DefinitionTransition and Analysis of Collective Construction Land System: Based on Rural HomesteadMethods and Effects of the Government's Management and Law Enforcement on Collective Construction LandWorrying Signs in the Comprehensive Reform Experiment of Overall Planning for Urban and Rural Construction Lands: Is the Homestead Exchange for House a Breakthrough?Innovations and Experiments by Farmers, Collectives and Local GovernmentsThe "Sub-Right" Houses: Contention and Implementation of Property and Development Rights of FarmersWay to Go in the Reform and Policy SuggestionsRevision of Related LawsLand Transfer and Agricultural Modernization:IntroductionEvolution and Characteristics of Policies over Land Transfer and Large-Scale ManagementCases on Land Transfer and Scale ManagementLand Transfer, Organizational Transition and Agricultural Modernization: Analysis and Discussion Based on CasesPolicy SuggestionsAppendix: Thesis Seminar: Land System Reform of ChinaAfterwordIndex Readership: Academics, undergraduate and graduates students, professionals interested in China's polices and protections of the land rights and property rights in its urbanization and agricultural modernization. Key Features:Comprehensive and in-depth analysis on China's land problemsFirst-hand materials from author's field investigation, including 16 case studies from Beijing, Tianjin, Shandong Province, Jiangsu Province, Liaoning Province, Guangdong Province, Sichuan Province and ChongqingOriginal research on the game between central and local governments over land property rights, the implementation of property rights, and the modernization of agriculture as a result of land transferKeywords:Land Rights;Urbanization;Property Rights;Law Revision;Land Transaction and Agricultural Modernization

Contains testimony and prepared statements by Patrick A. Randolph, Brian Schwarzwalder, James A. Dorn, and Mark A. Cohen.

Negotiating Rural Land Ownership in Southwest China offers the first comprehensive analysis of how China’s current system of land ownership has evolved over the past six decades. Based on extended fieldwork in Yunnan Province, the author explores how the three major rural actors—local governments, village communities, and rural households—have contested and negotiated land rights at the grassroots level, thereby transforming the structure of rural land ownership in the People’s Republic of China. At least two million rural settlements (or “natural villages”) are estimated to exist in China today. Formed spontaneously out of settlement choices over extended periods of time, these rural settlements are fundamentally different from the present-day administrative villages imposed by the government from above. Yi Wu’s historical ethnography sheds light on such “natural villages” and their role in shaping the current land ownership system. Drawing on local land disputes, archival documents, and rich local histories, the author unveils their enduring social identities in both the Maoist and reform eras. She pioneers the concept of “bounded collectivism” to describe what resulted from struggles between the Chinese state trying to establish collective land ownership, and rural settlements seeking exclusive control over land resources within their traditional borders. A particular contribution of this book is that it provides a nuanced understanding of how and why China’s rural land ownership is changing in post-Mao China. Yi Wu uses village-level data to show how local governments, rural communities, and rural households compete for use, income, and transfer rights in both agricultural production and the land market. She demonstrates that the current rural land ownership system in China is not a static system imposed by the state from above, but a constantly changing hybrid.