Publication Type
Journal Article
Version
acceptedVersion
Publication Date
1-2017
Abstract
Commodification of land is at the forefront of the re-casting of rural China by the spread of capitalism. This study examines a market-based program of land development rights trading in Chengdu, China. The program was made possible by a change in the central government’s land-use regulation that shifted the policy goal from ‘no net loss’ of farmland to ‘no net gain’ of construction land. We detail how local governments at multiple levels work together to construct land development rights as a commodity and build market institutions to foster its trading, illustrating land commodification as an inherently political process. A unique combination of innovative local policies and central political concessions created an outcome of ‘commodification without dispossession’ in Chengdu. Land commodification was used to finance rural reconstruction and brought profound changes to rural space, including re-configuring land-use patterns, transforming physical conditions in residential communities, and changing the representation of space.
Keywords
Land commodification, Transfer of development rights (TDR), Land-use regulation, Dispossession, Rural reconstruction, Capitalism
Discipline
Asian Studies | Public Affairs, Public Policy and Public Administration | Rural Sociology
Research Areas
Sociology
Publication
Geoforum
Volume
78
First Page
98
Last Page
109
ISSN
0016-7185
Identifier
10.1016/j.geoforum.2015.10.001
Publisher
Elsevier: 24 months
Citation
ZHANG, Qian Forrest, & WU, Jianling.(2017). Political dynamics in land commodification: Commodifying rural land development rights in Chengdu, China. Geoforum, 78, 98-109.
Available at: https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/soss_research/2394
Copyright Owner and License
Author
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 International License.
Additional URL
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.geoforum.2015.10.001
Included in
Asian Studies Commons, Public Affairs, Public Policy and Public Administration Commons, Rural Sociology Commons