Chinese Small Property
The Co-Evolution of Law and Social Norms

Qiao demonstrates how an impersonal and unbounded market can operate without legal protection or enforcement of property and contract rights.

Shitong Qiao (Author)

9781316628737, Cambridge University Press

Paperback / softback, published 21 February 2019

229 pages, 11 b/w illus. 10 tables
22.8 x 15.1 x 1.1 cm, 0.34 kg

'All in all, this book provides very valuable insights into the evolution of China's property rights regime. It revisits several influential conventional theories and offers critical and valid scrutiny based on empirical findings in China. These insights are most likely applicable to other primitive property markets in developing countries too. The author advances the theoretical depth of existing literature and offers an analytical framework for further research worth doing by scholars of varying fields, including property law, comparative law, law and development, and law and economics.' Weitseng Chen, ICON

Small property houses provide living space to about eight million migrant workers, office space for start-ups, grassroots police stations and public schools; their contribution to the economic growth and urbanization of a city is immense. The interaction between the small property sector and the formal legal order has a long history and small property has become an established engine of social and legal change. Chinese Small Property presents vivid stories about how institutional entrepreneurs worked together to create an impersonal market outside of the formal legal system to support millions of transactions. Qiao uses an eleven-month fieldwork project in Shenzhen - China's first special economic zone that has grown to a mega city with over fifteen million people - to demonstrate this. A thorough and detailed investigation into small property rights in China, Chinese Small Property is an invaluable source of new information for students and scholars of the field.

Introduction
1. The evolution of land law in China: partial reform, vested interests, and small property
2. Planting houses in Shenzhen
3. Small property, big market: a focal point explanation
4. Small property, adverse possession and optional law
5. Small property in transition: a tale of two villages
6. All quiet on the judicial front?
Conclusion: market transition: sticky norms or sticky law?

Subject Areas: Property law [LNS], Law & society [LAQ], Urban economics [KCU]