Land Bargains and Chinese Capitalism
The Politics of Property Rights under Reform

This book explains the origins of Chinese land politics and explores how property rights and urban growth strategies differ among Chinese cities.

Meg E. Rithmire (Author)

9781107539877, Cambridge University Press

Paperback / softback, published 6 October 2015

234 pages, 18 b/w illus. 20 tables
22.8 x 15.2 x 1.4 cm, 0.35 kg

'… the book is based on superb research, makes excellent use of a wide array of local documentary sources, and is a textbook model of the comparative method. Land Bargains and Chinese Capitalism should be on the reading lists of scholars and graduate students who are interested in urbanizing China's political economy, and especially those focusing on the northeast.' Sally Sargeson, The China Journal

Land reforms have been critical to the development of Chinese capitalism over the last several decades, yet land in China remains publicly owned. This book explores the political logic of reforms to land ownership and control, accounting for how land development and real estate have become synonymous with economic growth and prosperity in China. Drawing on extensive fieldwork and archival research, the book tracks land reforms and urban development at the national level and in three cities in a single Chinese region. The study reveals that the initial liberalization of land was reversed after China's first contemporary real estate bubble in the early 1990s and that property rights arrangements at the local level varied widely according to different local strategies for economic prosperity and political stability. In particular, the author links fiscal relations and economic bases to property rights regimes, finding that more 'open' cities are subject to greater state control over land.

1. Property and politics in China
2. The making of the real estate economy: urban reform and the origins of the party's land dilemma
3. The political economies of China
4. 'Land as a state asset': global capital and local state power in Dalian
5. Property rights and distributive politics: urban conflict and change in Harbin, 1978 to the present
6. Changchun motor city: the politics of compromise in an industrial town
7. Conclusions.

Subject Areas: Constitution: government & the state [JPHC]