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Accumulation by and without dispossession : rural land use, land expropriation, and livelihood implications in China

Since late 2013, one of China's most controversial policies -the one-child policy -has been gradually phased out, culminating in the reorganization of the National Health and Family Planning Commission in early 2018, which saw it drop the family planning part from its name. Has China forgone population intervention and started to pursue a liberal population policy? This article demonstrates that the Chinese political leadership is still determined to steer the direction of future demographic developments, even though it changed course and has to employ new modes of steering. In fact, it has even elevated political steering of demographic developments to new heights under the rubric of 'top-level design' (dingceng sheji). This study takes a comparative look at the two ends of the life course, birth and old age, to reveal the continuity and change in population planning and policy discourses in China.In late 2013, China's newly installed government under Xi Jinping first decided to relax and then two years later to abolish its decades-old 'one-child policy' (OCP). The news was received with a sense of relief in the Western press. Many reports recounted the numerous problematic aspects of the OCP, such as forced abortions and sterilizations, a skewed sex ratio, the rapid aging of society and shrinking labor supply. The reports also often highlighted that the policy might have been unnecessary in the first place, because the social changes accompanying economic development -urbanization, rising educational standards, more self-determination for women, etc. -would have depressed the birth rate by default without employing the draconian measures associated with the OCP. 1 Now demographers argue that Chinese couples would be reluctant to take up the opportunity to have a 1 Martin K. Whyte, Feng Wang and Yong Cai, 'Challenging myths about China's one-child policy', China Journal 74 (2015), pp. 144-159; Zhongwei Zhao and Guangyu Zhang, 'Socioeconomic factors have been the major driving force of China's fertility changes since the mid-1990s', Demography (2018).

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