EVENT DETAILS

China's New Land Reform and the Land Question in East Asian Development

Six years ago, the Chinese government declared its intention to reform the rural land system and turn villagers’ lands into marketable assets. Dubbed the “new land reform,” the announcement caused a flurry of modifications on rural land institutions. Fierce debates on how far the government should push villagers to transfer land rights have followed, and the recent trend again shows ambiguities and uncertainties. Will the new land reform succeed?

Professor Shaohua Zhan will situate China’s land issues in the broader East Asian context and argue for the critical importance of land rights in the era of urban precarity.

Shaohua Zhan is currently assistant professor of sociology at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. He studies land politics, food security, migration, and economic development. He is the author of The Land Question in China: Agrarian Capitalism, Industrious Revolution, and East Asian Development (Routledge, 2019), which examines the development dynamics of industrious revolution and agrarian capitalism in rural China.