China’s Urbanization And Land: A Framework For Reform
4China’s Urbanization and Land:A Framework for ReformIntroductionLand is of central importance to China’surbanization, economic growth, and socialstability. Since the late 1970s, land has beenan essential element in the government’sefforts to promote more market orientation.The government gradually developed a regulatory framework that consistently and successively strengthened individual propertyrights to land and promoted a more marketoriented allocation of land (box 4.1). The formulation of China’s urbanization strategy forthe next decade now provides an opportunityto further reform and deepen the regulatoryand institutional framework for land and tomodernize land administration and management to support efficient and inclusivegrowth and urbanization.As urbanization accelerated over the pastdecades, the shortcomings of China’s dualtrack rural-urban land tenure system becamemore evident, stimulating many provincesand municipalities to experiment with innovative land tenure arrangements. Landreform can build on these local experiencesto establish the regulatory and institutionalfoundation that can help guarantee the long-term and efficient supply of land and financing needed for urbanization that is basedon transparent and voluntary market transactions and taxation. Reform also shouldensure that the benefits from urbanizationcan be shared more equitably among China’scitizens. To achieve that aim, reform has totackle the dependency of China’s growthmodel on government-led rural land conversion and ensure the equitable treatment ofrural and urban land and property holdersduring urbanization. This reform will requirefurther strengthening and protecting of individual property rights to land, in particularrural land, and clarifying collective ownership arrangements.Undertaking land reform, the reform ofthe public finance system (see supportingreport 6), and the reform of the hukou systemrequires a carefully coordinated approach.1Reform needs to recalibrate the use of land,improve the governance of the land, andreduce the government’s dependence on revenue from land conversion and land sales.Reform could also help facilitate the transitionfrom land asset sales to modern taxation thatfits the needs of future sustainable urbaniza263
264Urban ChinaBox 4.1The evolution of China’s policy framework of land, 1978–2013China’s land policy and legal framework has evolvedcontinuously and consistently in response to economic and social changes and challenges. The broadpolicy directions adopted over the past decades illustrate that tenure security, property rights, and marketmechanisms are recognized as important prerequisites for China’s future development. The history ofland policy reform shows a consistent trend of gradually embodying policies into laws to achieve a comprehensive legal and institutional framework for land.The Household Responsibility System of 1978introduced a rural property system whereby farmland, though nominally remaining under collectiveownership, was contracted to individual households, initially for a 5-year lease period that was laterextended to 15 years (1984) and 30 years (1993). By1983, virtually all arable land had been allocatedto rural households. The Household ResponsibilitySystem was the most important driving force behindChina’s agricultural growth and poverty reductionduring the first decade of the reform period.Central Document No. 1 of 1984 (Notice on RuralWork for the Year 1984) established the foundationof the present Chinese rural land rights system. Thedocument clarified the separation of collective ownership from individual land use rights and stipulatedthat collective land be contracted to households for aterm of 15 years. It allowed for the voluntary transferof individual land rights between farmers within thecollective. Central Document No. 11 of 1993 (SeveralMeasures on Current Agricultural and Rural Economic Development) further strengthened the Household Responsibility System. It required that farmlandrights be extended for another term of 30 years uponthe expiration of the initial 15-year lease period. Itendorsed transfers of farmland rights for value withprior consent from the collective and restricted theperiodic readjustment of farmland rights throughadministrative means of the collective. Central Document No. 16 of 1996 (Notice on Further Stabilizingand Improving the Rural Land Contracting Relationship) explicitly prohibited large readjustments andrestricted small readjustments by requiring approvalby two-thirds of the villager assembly and the township and county governments. The document prohibited all forms of compulsory, nonvoluntary-scalefarming implemented through administrative order.The Land Management Law of 1986/88 adoptedthe Hong Kong Leasehold System and legalized pri-vate use rights to publicly owned land. It also provided the legal basis for transferring such rightsbetween private users and thereby created the conditions for mobilizing capital through land transfers. The revised Land Management Law of 1998mandated that collectively owned farmland be contracted to rural households for a term of 30 years.The revised law also set forth procedures to governthe requisition of farmland by the state but did notinclude provisions on prior notification, participationin determining compensation, and appeal duringexpropriation.The Interim Regulations on Allocation andGranting of Urban State-Owned Land Use Rightsof 1990 defined urban land rights as (a) unmarketable allocated rights available for public use and (b)marketable granted private use rights for a term of 70years. It also provided rules that govern these grantedprivate use rights and thus created the conditions forthe development of China’s urban land markets.Central Document No. 18 of 2001 (Notice onTransfers of Rural Households’ Use Rights of Contracted Land) provided further guidance on ruralland by prohibiting the compulsory taking-back ofland rights by collectives and contracting to nonmembers for value.The Rural Land Contracting Law of 2002 comprehensively regulates the extent of farmers’ landrights. It provides that rural land contracting andoperation, rights that are held by farmer households, may be transferred to other village households, leased to nonvillage households, exchanged,assigned, or transacted by other means in accordancewith the law. The law also provides legal remedies forany violations.The Property Law of 2007 is China’s first comprehensive civil property code. It articulates that all typesof property in China (state, collective, and private)are entitled to the same level of legal protection. Thelaw clarifies that collectively owned land is owned byall members of the community rather than by the collective entity. It characterizes farmers’ rural land userights as property rights, as opposed to contractualrights defined by previous laws, and provides greaterprotection for small farmers’ land rights. It also reaffirms the provisions of the Rural Land ContractingLaw but categorizes farmers’ 30-year land right asextendable upon expiration. Regardless of the typeof land transaction, land rights transfers must adhere
china’s urbanization and land: a fr ame work for reformBox 4.1(continued)to the principles of voluntariness and free negotiationbetween the transferor and the transferee, compensation, freedom from compulsion, content and formal procedure, specification of contract terms, anda requirement that transferees possess agriculturaloperational capacity.The Decision on Several Important Issues ofRural Reform of the Third Plenary Session of the 17thCentral Committee of the Communist Party of China(CPC), 2008, declared that farmers’ land rights willbe for “a long term without change,” setting forth thedirection for upgrading the 30-year land rights intode facto perpetual rights. The decision also distinguished between public interest use and commercialuse when converting agricultural land into urbanconstruction land, and required that conversions forcommercial use outside the planned urban areas notbe made through eminent domain expropriation.The decision called for affirming farmers’ land rightsthrough registration and certification.The Regulation on Expropriation of and Compensation for Buildings on State-Owned Land of 2011(the Urban Takings Regulation) defines, explicitlyand unambiguously, the needs of public interest forwhich the state may resort to eminent domain powerto expropriate urban private property. The regulationincludes three unprecedented features: a list of thepurposes for which the state may take private property; a requirement that all public purpose projectsmust be implemented by government and for publicuse by a public institution, a clause that emphasizesthe public interest principle; and the exclusion oflocal governments’ discretion to expand the list forany nonlisted public interest purposes. The scope ofexpropriation can be expanded only through law,stipulated by the National People’s Congress, orthrough administrative regulation, stipulated by theState Council in accordance with China’s LegislationLaw of 2000.Central Documents No. 1 from 2010 to 2013 reiterated the need to affirm farmers’ property rights toland through the registering and certifying of theirfarmland, forestland, and residential land rights, andthe need to establish a rural land registration system. In Central Document No. 1 of 2013, the centralauthorities also advanced the target of registering andcertifying farmers’ land rights within five years.aSeveral central documents issued between 2004and 2013 set policy guidelines for protecting farmers’ land rights in the process of urbanization andindustrialization. The State Council’s DocumentNo. 28 of 2004 (Decision on Deepening Reformsand Intensifying Strict Land Management) requiresthe state to follow the principle of restoring farmers’original living standards and ensuring their long-termlivelihoods when determining compensation for landexpropriation. The State Council’s Document No. 9of 2011 (Notice on Actively and Carefully PushingReforms in the Institutions for Residential Registration Management) explicitly prohibits compulsorytaking-back, directly or indirectly, of migrant farmworkers’ land rights, including residential land, arable land, forestland, and grassland rights, when theymove to cities and obtain urban residential registration. In Central Document No. 1 of 2013, the CentralCommittee and the State Council jointly require thatfarmers’ living standards be raised and their longterm livelihoods be ensured when their land is takenfor urbanization or industrialization.Land policy and legal reform has progressed anddeepened significantly, but ensuring fully secure,marketable, and long-term land rights for all farmers remains challenging. A revision of the Land Management Law is expected to close important legalgaps with regard to (a) clarifying the scope of stateexpropriations for public purpose, (b) determiningcompensation approaches for rural land takings andallocating compensation between the collective andindividual farmer, and (c) strengthening tenure security and extending legal protection of farmers’ rightsto all types of land, including residential land and collective construction land.Source: Li and Wang 2013.a. Central Document No. 1 of 2010, Several Opinions on Strengthening Integrated Urban-Rural Development andFurther Solidifying the Foundation of Agricultural and Rural Development; Central Document No. 1 of 2011, Decisionon Speeding Up Reform and Development of Water Conservancy; Central Document No. 1 of 2012, Several Opinions onSpeeding Up Agricultural Scientific and Technological Innovation and Sustainably Increasing Capacity for Provision ofAgricultural Products; and Central Document No. 1 of 2013, Several Opinions on Speeding Up Development of ModernAgriculture and Further Strengthening Rural Development Vitality.265
266Urban Chination, deepens land markets, and clarifies forrural citizens their property rights and landassets at home and their opportunities andentitlements for integration into the cities.China’s dual-track tenure system still separates collectively owned rural land and stateowned urban land, which are governed byseparate regulations and institutions. Reformshould aim at gradually removing the complexity and contradictions inherent in thisdual-track tenure system, in particular, theambiguities of China’s collective rural landownership. The separation between ruraland urban land governance contributes tothe persistent disparities between rural andurban residents. Reform, therefore, needs tocut across the rural and urban spaces if disparity is to be reduced. Land reform shouldgradually reduce the role of government inthe land allocation process and allow formarket allocation and the integration of therural and urban land markets.The overhaul of China’s rural land requisition system could help reduce hardship and discontent in rural areas and bringsocial benefits by improving efficiency in theland allocation process. Reform will involveamending China’s land laws and regulationsto clarify and define the “public purpose” forwhich land can be expropriated by the government, restricting current rural land-takingpractices, and introducing approaches thatincrease compensation standards for requisitioned land. Legal reform should protectfarmers’ property rights to rural land throughproperty rights confirmation and land titling.Building on international experience, themarketability of rural land and propertyneeds strengthening to supply land for urbandevelopment more efficiently and support theconsolidation of farmland that is needed foragricultural sector development and incomegrowth in rural areas.The integration of peri-urban collective land and property, along with migrantresidents, into China’s cities and the urbaneconomy needs to be supported. Reformneeds to focus on the integration of ruraland urban construction land markets toallow more equitable sharing of the benefitsof urbanization between rural and urbancitizens. Reform could provide the foundation for the redevelopment of urban fringeareas in socially acceptable ways, formalizeinformal housing rights in urban villages,and strengthen market-based mechanismsto promote the provision of low-cost andlegally protected housing for China’s migrantpopulation. New approaches to govern agricultural and nonagricultural collective assetscan be considered.In addition, China’s land administration and management apparatus need to bemodernized, including the development ofmodern institutions, skills, and professionalservices. This modernization will likely be alonger-term task that will involve developingregulations and institutions for the management and governance of land, such as cadastral systems, land use control mechanisms,land market regulations, land valuation andtaxation approaches, and arbitration andappeals mechanisms.The underlying issues that necessitate further reform of China’s land tenure framework and the modernization of its landmanagement system have evolved since the1990s. As market reforms advanced, government-led industrialization and urbanization policies and programs capitalized onland but in distinctively different ways. Localgovernments successfully pursued an industrialization model that built on the inflow offoreign direct investment and globalization,an abundant supply of rural labor, and localcompetition. In promoting growth, local governments could build on a highly conduciveland tenure framework that allowed them theexclusive power to acquire, convert, and supply rural land for industrial use.China successfully industrialized using thisprocess, but it has not become an urbanizedsociety because the integration of China’slabor supply into the urban areas and theworkers’ transformation into urban citizenshave remained incomplete. China’s manymigrant workers are the visible outcomeof this incomplete transformation process.The partial urban integration of migrants isapparent, for example, in the informal andmutual arrangements between migrants andrural collectives in peri-urban areas. Migrants
china’s urbanization and land: a fr ame work for reformin search of affordable housing have met withrural collectives that supply land and housingat the urban fringe. The informal urbanization of rural peri-urban areas and migrantsand the persistent rural-urban disparities area result of China’s land conversion–basedindustrial and urban development.Local implementation of economic, land,and fiscal policy and, at times, abuse oflocal government power have led to unintended consequences that are widely viewedas unsustainable. The global financial crisisof 2008 and the subsequent stimulus policieshave had a dramatic impact on China’s landbased economic growth model through accelerated land taking and conversion, bringing the inefficiencies of current land tenurearrangements and the need for reform intoeven clearer focus.Incentives and inefficient landallocation patternsChina’s municipalities are responsible foreconomic development and employmentgeneration, in addition to more traditionalresponsibilities of managing municipal services. Gross domestic product (GDP) growthis an important metric by which mayors areheld accountable by higher levels of government, which leads to a narrow focus on GDPgrowth. Because local governments are theowners of all urban land in their jurisdiction,they have strong incentives to supply cheapland for industrial use to generate economicgrowth. But because many local governmentsfollow the same approach, cheap land is nota comparative advantage. Instead, excessivesupply of industrial land has fueled the inefficient growth of urban boundaries and proliferation of industrial development zones.Simultaneously, the tightly controlled supply of land for urban use has contributed torecord prices for residential and commercialland, leading to housing price bubbles. Governments not only control land conversionand land supply but also set policies and landuse planning regulations, approvals, andimplementation, thereby contributing to inefficient urban growth patterns, violations ofland-related regulations, and rent seeking.Fiscal dependence on land-basedincomeThe combination of China’s land tenure andpublic finance system, including cheap accessof local governments to land, monopolypower in land supply, and unbalanced revenue and expenditure assignments, providesstrong incentives for local governments togenerate local revenue from land sales. Manygovernments have become reliant on ruralland expropriation and land concessionincome. Revenue from land sales providesa significant share of local government revenues. They also have a widespread relianceon mortgage loans backed by future landsales, which are offered through local landbanks, that help circumvent restrictions onlocal government borrowing. Both practiceshave contributed to the aggressive requisitioning of farmland, which contributes tounsustainable local finance and fiscal risk,unsound urban growth, and waste of landresources.Emergence of landless farmersFarmland expropriation and conversionto urban uses reached nearly 5,700 squarekilometers in 2011. An estimated 53 millionfarmers have lost their land and farm-basedlivelihood in the process of urbanizationover the past 20 years (Xu and others 2013).Low compensation for lost land and property, combined with an underdeveloped ruralsocial security system, has made it often difficult for farmers and migrants to maintaintheir livelihood. Those conditions—the lossof property and livelihood, lack of transparency in the process of land requisition, lowcompensation paid to affected farmers, andthe large difference between such compensation and the price received by the governmentwhen the land is auctioned and sold for urbandevelopment—have resulted in widespreadsocial unrest and a growing sense of injustice.Incomplete urban integr
Granting of Urban State-Owned Land Use Rights of 1990 defined urban land rights as (a) unmarket-able allocated rights available for public use and (b) marketable granted private use rights for a term of 70 years. It also provided rules that govern these granted private use rights and thus created the conditions for the development of China’s .
Urbanization can have direct impacts on the use of prairie fragments if birds avoid sites sur-rounded by more urban features. For grassland ecosystems, urbanization might also have indi-rect effects if increased urbanization results in smaller patches with more edge relative to their size, or if urbanization interferes with habitat
Urbanization Control Area (Development is not permitted, in principle.) Urbanization Promotion Area (Development is promoted) Land Population National Total 37.79 million ha (100.0%) Outside City Planning Area 27.81 million ha (73.6%) Urbanization Promotion Area 1.43 million ha (3.8%) Urbanization Control Area 3.73 million ha (9.9%) 126.87 million
WEI Yi-min, China XU Ming-gang, China YANG Jian-chang, China ZHAO Chun-jiang, China ZHAO Ming, China Members Associate Executive Editor-in-Chief LU Wen-ru, China Michael T. Clegg, USA BAI You-lu, China BI Yang, China BIAN Xin-min, China CAI Hui-yi, China CAI Xue-peng, China CAI Zu-cong,
4 SDG-11 and Habitat III: Call for Sustainable Urbanization 7 5 Planned and Sustainable Urbanization is by Choice, Not by Chance. 7 6 An Integrated Approach for Sustainable Urbanization: The 3PA 9 6.1Rules and Regulations 14 6.2Urban Design 16 6.3Financial Plan 19 6.4How Do These Three Components Interact with Each Other?
points. Students of urban studies can use it for learning about concepts and measurements of urbanization, causes of urbanization, world trends, trend of urbanization in India, urban problems and perspectives and key issues involved in urban planning. 1. An Introduction to the Study of Urbanization with Special Reference to India 2.
Urbanization is an inevitable phenomenon that accompanies the development of a country. Worldwide are becoming an increasingly urbanized species. The rapid urbanization of the world’s population over the twentieth century is described in the 2005 Revision of the UN World Urbanization Prospects report.
Keywords: urbanization, megacities, sustainable development, ICT. 1 World Urban Population – UN prediction According to the United Nation 2005 Revision of World Urbanization Prospects, the twentieth century witnessed rapid urbanization of the world’s population. The global proportion o
becoming intense in the peri-urban areas. The growing demand of land for urbanization is primarily intended to be supplied by expropriation and reallocation of peri-urban land through lease contract. This shows that land acquisition and delivery for urban expansion and development purposes is completely state controlled on the rational that all .
