This thesis examines the theories and practices surrounding the rural land takings law in modern China. It identifies and rejects the dominant Transition Paradigm in the existing literature which treats the contemporary crisis of rural land expropriation in China as a case of unfulfilled constitutional promise and dispenses prescriptions aimed at developing the Chinese expropriation law towards the supposedly more advanced models of takings law found in other countries, especially the USA. By unearthing the long overlooked historical lineage within which the rural land takings law evolves over the past century in China, including the almost forgotten original takings clause in the 1954 PRC Constitution and the foundational theories propounded by both the communist and nationalist parties, this thesis offers a much richer picture on how and why the Chinese expropriation law has become the way it is today. It shows that the widely recognized phenomenon of “land finance” is a symptom rather than cause of the problem, which lies in the deeply entrenched tradition of rural land takings for the party-state’s social transformative programmes, rendering the Chinese experience incomparable to that of any other countries. The current takings clause in the 1982 PRC Constitution and the present law in this area, despite the relevant reforms over the past decade, remain to faithfully reflect such a tradition characterized by the state’s plan-based top-down control over rural land and the presumption of state expropriation in non-agricultural use of rural land. Since these have been the paramount features of the Chinese land regime for over half a century and are unlikely to change in the foreseeable future, most of the reform recommendations made in the existing scholarship are either irrelevant or unfeasible. However, this is not to say that no change is possible. A more modest yet more realistic reform proposal will be put forward.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:bl.uk/oai:ethos.bl.uk:640023 |
| Date | January 2014 |
| Creators | Peng, Chun |
| Contributors | Craig, Paul; Thornton, Patricia |
| Publisher | University of Oxford |
| Source Sets | Ethos UK |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation |
| Source | http://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:e5566b44-d021-4037-9e03-28c0c69eae1b |
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