One of the most pressing issues in contemporary China is the massive rural land takings that have taken place at a scale unprecedented in human history. Expropriation of land has dispossessed and displaced millions for several decades, despite the protection of property rights in the Chinese constitution. Combining meticulous doctrinal analysis with in-depth historical investigation, Chun Peng tracks the origin and evolution of China's rural land takings law over the twentieth century and demonstrates an enduring tradition of land takings for state-led social transformation, under which the takings law is designed to be power-confirming. With changed socio-political circumstances and a new rights-respecting constitutional agenda, a rebalance of the law is now underway, but only within existing parameters. Peng provides a piercing analysis of how land has been used by the largest developing country in the world to develop itself, at what costs and where the future might be.

One of the most pressing issues in contemporary China is the massive rural land takings that have taken place at a scale unprecedented in human history. Expropriation of land has dispossessed and displaced millions for several decades, despite the protection of property rights in the Chinese constitution. Combining meticulous doctrinal analysis with in-depth historical investigation, Chun Peng tracks the origin and evolution of China's rural land takings law over the twentieth century and demonstrates an enduring tradition of land takings for state-led social transformation, under which the takings law is designed to be power-confirming. With changed socio-political circumstances and a new rights-respecting constitutional agenda, a rebalance of the law is now underway, but only within existing parameters. Peng provides a piercing analysis of how land has been used by the largest developing country in the world to develop itself, at what costs and where the future might be.

Abstract: 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.

Chinese local governments have taken many rural lands in order to promote urbanization and modernization of the local rural areas, which, unfortunately, has given rise to many social conflicts. The current Chinese land taking laws have provided some guidance on the use of taking power, including the public interest requirement and the compensation requirement. However, these requirements are still insufficient. As can be observed from a series of cases, the fragmented ownership of rural residents caused a problem of anticommons, leading to huge transaction costs in the negotiation between governments and villagers. The mechanism of Land Assembly Districts, proposed by Professor Michael Heller and Ricks Hills, might be an effective way to handle this problem, since it can produce a relatively fair compensation for villagers, facilitate dialogue and communication, and prevent opportunism. This article considers the possibility of adopting this proposal by allowing the village committee to act collectively to negotiate the level of compensation with the Chinese local governments. This approach might effectively resolve numerous conflicts that arose in Chinese land taking events. The article also addresses the potential concern that the collective action might infringe upon the property rights of some dissenting villagers, from both theoretical and practical perspectives.

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.