China

China’s society has been urbanizing at an unprecedented rate in the past few decades. In order to support the increasing urban growth, the Chinese government has been displacing land from farmers and selling it to property developers. Since the 1970s, as many as 40 million Chinese citizens have been forcibly displaced from their land to make way for various economic development projects. These citizens are often impoverished farmers that receive monetary compensation for their land that is far below a fair market price. While the displaced land is taken from rural communities, the benefits of development mainly benefit the urbanized population. Now, China’s property law dilemma is the leading cause of mass public protests that are working to undermine the current authoritarian government.

The majority of land expropriation in China is a result of private commercial interests and often generates hundreds of billions of dollars every year for local authorities. There are very strong incentives for local government authorities to continue their practices of coercive land expropriation. Under the current system, local governments sell expropriated land to property developers and create huge profits that become a major source of local revenue and GDP growth. While the Chinese central government is wary about these common practices and understands that secure property rights for farmers are majorly important to social stability, the incentives for local authorities to generate easy revenue is too high.

With the rise of insecure property rights and land expropriation in China, peasant protests have been increasing as well. Land expropriation is one of the main externalities of China’s rapid development and urbanization that is primarily responsible for the increasing conflicts in rural communities. Land expropriation places a huge economic burden on rural farmers who do not receive fair monetary compensation for their land. In addition, these township governments use coercive measures to displace the farmer’s from their homes such as entering the villager’s homes late at night, destroying farm crops, detaining citizens, and using force. This behavior creates resentment from these communities, especially when these policies are enforced without the approval of higher authorities.

Securing and protecting land property rights is hugely important for the population and for the Chinese economy. There is no such thing as free land and therefore it is the responsibility of the government to ensure that the affected citizens of China are given fair treatment and compensation. This is not only in the interest of moral duty but it is also in the best interest of the government, investors, and businesses to help narrow the large urban-rural per capita income gap in China.