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Who Owns China's Land? Policies, Property Rights and Deliberate Institutional Ambiguity

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 August 2001

Peter Ho
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Abstract

In many cases land leases are issued by the administrative village, while the land belonged to the natural village in the past. It is like the ownership rights to land have been silently stolen from the natural village and vested in a level higher. […] Yet, to date there are not many conflicts, because farmers are not well imbued with the idea of “property.” But problems are sure to arise in the future …Sheng Li, oral communication, 1999. Sheng Li is a senior official within the Bureau of Law and Policy System Reform of the Ministry of Agriculture.

Type
Research Article
Information
The China Quarterly , Volume 166 , June 2001 , pp. 394 - 421
Copyright
School of Oriental and African Studies, 2001

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Footnotes

I would like to thank Eduard B. Vermeer, Mark Selden, Jeroen de Kloet, Zhao Heng and the land rights jurist Ellen-Roos Kambel for their helpful comments on earlier versions of this article, together with Shi Wenzheng, Liu Jinghai, Buhe Chaolu, Lai Cunli and Li Sheng for their unlimited support and advice during the fieldwork. I take full responsibility for the opinions expressed and all possible errors. This research was funded by the European Union-China Academic Network (ECAN) and the Research School for Asian, African and Amerindian Studies (Research School CNWS) of Leiden University. Legal terms have been translated according to: Shutong Yu and Jia Wen (eds.), Xin han-ying faxue cidian (A New Chinese–English Law Dictionary) (Beijing: Falü chubanshe, 1998).