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Shitong Qiao, J.S.D. Candidate, Yale Law School; Research Scholar, U.S.-Asia Law Institute of New York University School of Law.

This article investigates the history of land use reform in China and proves that the so-called rural land problem is the consequence of China’s partial land use reform. In 1988, the Chinese government chose to conduct land use reform sequentially: first urban and then rural, which made local governments in China the biggest beneficiary and supporter of the partial reform. However, a beneficiary of partial reform does not necessarily support further reform because of the excessive rents to seek between the market of urban real estate and the government-controlled system of rural land development and transfer. The central government, in particular its agency in charge of land administration (the former Bureau of Land Administration, which has been elevated to the Ministry of Land and Resources), also has interests endowed in this regime. In contrast, losers of this partial reform, Chinese farmers and other relevant groups, have no voice or power in the political process of the reform, which makes it difficult for the central government to achieve an agenda that balances interests of all relevant parties. However, this is not to say that a country, even without a democratic political structure, would necessarily be trapped in the partial reform equilibrium. In the China case, Chinese farmers challenged the existing system through forming a huge small-property market, around which social groups disadvantaged by the partial reform, mainly Chinese farmers and middle-and-low income urban population, present their interests claims and their ability to jeopardize the purposes the central and local governments hope to achieve through the existing system. This has led to adaptive policy changes.
* Sponsored by the Center for the Study of Contemporary China (CSCC) at University of Pennsylvania