Land management practice in Fuzhou, People’s Republic of China

• Main Author: Chen, Shi Kuan James
• Language: English
• Published: 2009
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/2429/11302

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.