Routledge Urban Development in China under the Institution of Land Rights (Routledge Advances in Regional Economics, Science and Policy)

How have the development and redevelopment of China’s cities since the early 1950s transformed the settlements and fortunes of a fifth of the world’s population? Rapid urbanization since the 1980s has changed the nation from a rural society to an urban one, marking it as one of the most significant transformations in history. As a country with severe land scarcity, land resources are intensively contested for during urbanization under the new regime of marketization. This book focuses on the impact of the institution of land rights that have transitioned from private ownership to socialist state ownership, and subsequently to public land leasing in the urban domain, and to collective ownership in rural areas. In the context of defining the relationship between the state and the market, the gradualist transition of land rights gives rise to intriguing processes of place-making. The elaboration of these processes will engage several revealing conceptual notions: land as a means of production, land commodification, ambiguous land rights, incomplete land rights, trading land use rights for land development rights, institutional uncertainty, land rent seeking and dissipating, local developmental state, danwei-enterprises, and more. The newly created landed interests are embedded intricately within the urban spatial structure. This book would especially be of interest to scholars interested in developmental economics, urban planning, geography, public policies, public management, and sociology, and also practitioners focusing on development and planning. Review "Market forces are never absent from the economy, no matter the regime or its stated objectives. What is interesting is how market forces reveal themselves. Supply and demand are always in play. The formal and informal nature of property rights as they have emerged always matter. Prof. Jieming Zhu has developed an informative and readable narrative of how these observations apply to modern Chinese urban development. Rapid economic development and rapid urbanization, on scales never before seen, make this discussion valuable and poignant. The book offers a wonderful summary of how markets, especially urban land markets, function in today’s China. The book is rich in factual detail, clearly written and well-grounded in relevant property rights theory. It is informative as well as a pleasure to read."― Peter Gordon, Professor Emeritus, School of Public Policy, University of Southern California, USA "Jieming Zhu has a clear understanding of the nuances of land rights and ‘markets’ in China and of their evolution since 1978. He depicts how these evolving and convoluted sets of rights affected behavior in land markets, the evolution of the spatial structure of cities, and inequality. I urge researchers on land markets in China to read this informative scholarly work and to carefully consider its informed perspectives." ― Vernon Henderson, Professor, London School of Economics and Political Science "This book (re)examines China’s urban and rural development through the unique lens of land rights and helps us understand China’s development after the establishment of People’s Republic of China and the dynamic changes in China’s urban and rural regions. Scholars, students and professionals of planning, geography, urban studies, and so on, will definitely enjoy the profound insights and originality of what this book offers." ― Zhigang Li, Professor, School of Urban Design, Wuhan University, China "Zhu describes in depth a ‘growth machine with Chinese characteristics’. Here the interests of the national and local state sometimes converge but often conflict, land is publicly owned but city officials depend on revenues from developers to finance local services, fortunes are being made from speculative building and everyone is jockeying for a share of it, while the migrants whose growing numbers support the system are mostly excluded from its benefits