China's Land Expropriation System Improvement

Nowadays China is undergoing a process of industrialization and urbanization which demands large areas of land for housing and other non-agricultural purposes. Thus the state begins to exercise the power of city's condemnation by which the owner of land in the suburb of the city is transferred from the rural collectives to the state for urban construction. Since land taking involves the change of the ownership of land which means that a number of peasants lose their land. This phenomenon runs on the wheels of inevitability and reflects the needs of the time.We should study how can the rural collectives especially the peasant realize their rights and interests when their land is taken; how can we protect the rights and interests of peasants through improvement of the mechanism of land taking, etc. Such kind of study is very significant both in theory and practice in terms of the reform of land taking, protection of peasants' rights and maintenance of social stability and sustainable development of economy.This paper centers on the protection of rights and interests of peasants when their land was taken. The author intents to devise a reasonable mechanism for the protection of rights and interests of peasants by discussing the connotation and characteristics of land taking, the flaws in existing laws and regulations related to land taking and protection of peasants' rights and interests. This paper consists of four main parts other than the forewords and summary. Part one analyses the connotation and legal characteristics of basic terms such as land taking, reversible land purchase and defines the types of rights and interests of peasants in the process of land taking. Part two discuss the drawbacks in the protection of rights and interests of peasants under existing land taking system. The author insists that the reasons for the drawbacks include the imperfect provisions in relevant laws, bad enforcement of the provision and the inadequate awareness of the peasants. Part three started with the comparative observation of protection of rights and interests of the people whose land has been expropriated and borrowing the good experience of other countries and regions. Then the author suggests that we should improve land taking system by further defining the...