The State, Land System, and Land Development Processes in Contemporary China

Abstract

In the era of state socialism under Mao, land in China was treated as a means of production and was allocated administratively by the state free of charge. To accommodate the interests of foreign investors without violating the socialist principle of public ownership, the Chinese state has, since the 1980s, separated land use rights from land ownership and opened up a new market track for the conveyance of land use rights to commercial users. The result has been a distinct dual-track land system in the new political economy, characterized by significant asymmetry for arbitrage. Discrepancy between the state's intention and actual outcome has been a consequence of the internal diversity of power relations concerning land development. Our data analysis reveals that the loss of farmland to nonagricultural developments has slowed down in recent years, that the state's intention to increase land use efficiency has been severely compromised by the socialist legacy, and that illegal activities are pervasive. The Chinese socialist state is better seen as a dynamic, complex, heterogeneous, and self-conflictual institutional ensemble in and through which the forces and interests of different levels of the state are contested, negotiated, and mediated.

Geographic determinants of China's urbanization

“…These controls were introduced through the Basic Farmland Protection Regulation in 1994 and further developed in the Land Administration Law of 1998 (Lin and Ho, 2005). Christensen (2015) shows that the design of this policy a ects its impact on agricultural conversion across provinces.…”

The Impacts on Illegal Farmland Conversion of Adopting Remote Sensing Technology for Land Inspection in China

“…As in some Western countries, farmland preservation has been faced with a lack of local governments' support and cooperation [108]. China's local governments have a strong motivation to convert farmland to non-agricultural uses [15]. There has been notable differences in local government's reactions to conflicts in farmland preservation compared to Western countries such as the US and Canada.…”

“…It is at and above the county-level governments' responsibility to curb illegal farmland land conversion. Ironically, local government has also become involved in illegal farmland conversion by illegally approving farmland conversion [47], and has even become the biggest violator in terms of amount of illegal farmland conversion [15,38,48], associated with deficient supervision [47]. Therefore, the central issue of implementation of China's farmland preservation policy is how to supervise and compel local governments to fulfill their duty of farmland preservation.…”

“…Therefore, it is important for farmland preservation to curb illegal farmland. Previous studies regarding China's illegal land use have focused on the causes of illegal farmland conversion in China and placed emphasis on the role of individuals, local governments and the land tenure system [15,[33][34][35][36][37][38][39]. Beyond analysis of the driving force, research has largely neglected issues of improving relevant laws and regulation and their enforcement, as an element of deterrence.…”

“…Many studies have addressed the impacts of urbanization, industrialization, economic growth and governance on farmland loss [4][5][6][7][8][9]. Another threat to farmland preservation in China has been illegal farmland conversion [10][11][12][13][14][15][16]. Since the 1978 economic reforms, there has been extensive and persistent unauthorized development carried out without permits [17].…”