A Study On Evolution And Governance Mechanism Of Land Conflicts In The Process Of China’s Urbanization

In China’s urbanization process, land conflict, characterized by high frequency of occurrence, intense conflicts of interest and effect of a wide range, is a major problem affecting social order and stability. It has a direct relationship with the smooth running of social system and successful transformation of China’s urbanization. This study put the structural factor "governance" into the research of land conflicts happened in China’s urbanization. According to this study, imperfect governance structure and irrational function of local government are important causes of land conflict evolution which include occurrence, diffusion, and transformation.Although property right theory of school of institutional economics has certain rationality in the explanation of mechanism of land conflict, but it can’t fully explain the general law and social process of land conflict evolution. In the process of urbanization, land conflict dominantly manifested as interest game between local government and farmers over the distribution of land income. It should attach more importance to governance of local government to profoundly reveal behavior logics of the two stakeholders. Therefore, land conflict in China’s urbanization is essentially a political economy concept.Government leading is a main source of strength for China’s urbanization. Since the1990s, behaviors of local government have experienced a gradual change from "conduction of enterprises" to "city management" and "land management". Large-scale urban construction and land acquisition have become an important driving force of local economic growth. And behind that mechanism of economic growth, there has hidden unreasonable mechanism of land income distribution and cost sharing of city development that local government controlled and monopolized most of the land revenue by its own strong position. Because of the weak position, farmers only received a few resettlement compensation, what’s worse, they faced high threshold and cost of "resocialization". Thus, the root causes of land conflict are fuzzy boundaries of power, imbalance of income distribution and unreasonable cost burden.As rational stakeholders, farmers will inevitably revolt against inequitable distribution of land revenue by uncooperation, petition, and group protest and other forms of resistance. In the governance practice, local government has conducted strategical governance means based on petition system and stability maintenance to deal with farmers’ resistance, and comprehensively used a variety of formal and informal means to deal with the increasingly serious land conflicts. Instead of fundamentally solving the problem of farmers’ resistance, these strategical governance tools just rely on a mandatory way to force pressure of land conflicts downward to achieve " rigid stability" of the society, which result in the accumulation and spread of land conflicts in social system. As time goes on, those farmers who have experienced land acquisition and resettlement suffered multiple difficulties in the "resocialization", land conflict will become more sensitive and complex, and gradually evolved into a risk of social system.On the basis of theoretical research, following the full path of theoretical deductive method, the author brought up a theoretical proposition system on the evolution of land conflict. In the empirical study, the author summarized the internal relations between system structure and institutional environment in local governance and the occurence, diffusion, and transformation of land conflict, and clarified how the governance factors which include fuzzy boundaries of power, revenue allocation rules, cost-sharing mechanism, championship system, land finance, and strategical tools work on the evolution of land conflicts. Conclusions of empirical research come from fieldwork and multiple cases of E City, L City, G Development Zone and H New Area. These theoretical propositions have strong representation and common sense. Multiple case study ensures the richness and reliability of materials, and vividly reflects the basic situation of land conflicts in China’s urbanization. In the fieldwork, the author further observed what governance tools are conducive to resolve land conflict, which build the foundation for governance mechanism.In the process of urbanization, it requires correctly handling the relationships between government and market, government and farmers, government and society and other interest groups to achieve efficient governance of land conflict. The core objective is to promote the transformation of local governance towards the positive direction. In practice, the solutions to land conflict include the following aspects, firstly, to clear boundaries of government and market to constraint land management behaviors of local government; Secondly, to construct rational land revenue allocation rules to allow farmers to share proceeds of land urbanization; Thirdly, to strengthen the coordinated role of formal governance to land conflict to release the pressure of land conflict; Fourthly, to make government functions return to the public interest to provide basic public services for landless farmers.