Summary: | This is an empirical study of how the municipal government of Fuzhou, Fujian
Province in the PRC carried out land management from the beginning of urban land
reform in the late 1980s to the mid-1990s. It is argued that land management practice is
explicable through the model of the local corporatist state which emerged as the result of
economic reform and decentralisation in post-Mao China. Based on interviews with local
officials and other informants and secondary research, the study examines land
management practice in the four areas of inner city redevelopment, industrial relocation,
hidden land transactions by state-owned enterprises and economic technology
development zones. The study concludes that three characteristics make up the totality of
land management practice in Fuzhou - the extensive assertion of control over its domain
of corporate governance, the exercise of its power as an instrument to serve its various
interests that are defined by the specific contexts, and the fluidity and informal nature of
extensive bargaining among the participants in the land development process.
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