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Values in Land: Fiscal Pressures, Land Disputes and Justice Claims in Rural and Peri-urban China

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  • Susan Whiting

    (Department of Political Science, University of Washington, Box 353530, Seattle, Washington, WA 98195-3530, USA, swhiting@u.washington.edu)

Abstract

This paper explores justice claims and legal recourse in disputes over land rights—a major source of unrest—in rural China. Local governments’ search for fiscal revenue and the concomitant fiscalisation of land create the context for the recent wave of land disputes. The types of dispute and the contexts in which disputes arise shape the ways in which citizens seek recourse to threats to their property rights and shape the kinds of justice claim they make in the process. Citizens whose land rights are threatened by land takings orchestrated by local governments and outside developers are more likely to pursue both distributive and procedural justice claims in court than are citizens whose land rights are threatened by reallocation of land within the community. In the latter case, citizens are more likely to pursue distributive but not procedural justice claims through mediation. These patterns hold in both case study and survey evidence. Distributive justice is associated with the fairness of outcome of a dispute, while procedural justice is associated with fairness of the process of dispute resolution.

Suggested Citation

  • Susan Whiting, 2011. "Values in Land: Fiscal Pressures, Land Disputes and Justice Claims in Rural and Peri-urban China," Urban Studies, Urban Studies Journal Limited, vol. 48(3), pages 569-587, February.
  • Handle: RePEc:sae:urbstu:v:48:y:2011:i:3:p:569-587
    DOI: 10.1177/0042098010390242
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    Cited by:

    1. Deininger, Klaus & Jin, Songqing & Liu, Shouying & Xia, Fang, 2015. "Household-level impacts of property rights reform in peri-urban China: Evidence from the Chengdu National Experiment," 2015 AAEA & WAEA Joint Annual Meeting, July 26-28, San Francisco, California 205753, Agricultural and Applied Economics Association.
    2. Deininger,Klaus W. & Jin,Songqing & Liu,Shouying & Xia,Fang, 2015. "Impact of property rights reform to support China?s rural-urban integration : household-level evidence from the Chengdu national experiment," Policy Research Working Paper Series 7388, The World Bank.
    3. Li Fang & Chuanhao Tian & Xiaohong Yin & Yan Song, 2018. "Political Cycles and the Mix of Industrial and Residential Land Leasing," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 10(9), pages 1-24, August.
    4. Deininger,Klaus W. & Jin,Songqing & Liu,Shouying & Shao,Ting & Xia,Fang, 2015. "Impact of property rights reform to support China?s rural-urban integration : village-level evidence from the Chengdu national experiment," Policy Research Working Paper Series 7389, The World Bank.
    5. Ling-Hin Li, 2017. "Balancing Rural and Urban Development: Applying Coordinated Urban–Rural Development (CURD) Strategy to Achieve Sustainable Urbanisation in China," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 9(11), pages 1-15, October.
    6. Yanwei Zhang & Hualin Xie, 2019. "Interactive Relationship among Urban Expansion, Economic Development, and Population Growth since the Reform and Opening up in China: An Analysis Based on a Vector Error Correction Model," Land, MDPI, vol. 8(10), pages 1-31, October.
    7. Cai, Meina & Liu, Pengfei & Wang, Hui, 2020. "Political trust, risk preferences, and policy support: A study of land-dispossessed villagers in China," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 125(C).
    8. Taiyang Zhong & Xianjin Huang & Lifang Ye & Steffanie Scott, 2014. "The Impacts on Illegal Farmland Conversion of Adopting Remote Sensing Technology for Land Inspection in China," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 6(7), pages 1-26, July.
    9. Cai, Meina & Sun, Xin, 2018. "Institutional bindingness, power structure, and land expropriation in China," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 109(C), pages 172-186.

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