Research On The Formation Mechanism And Governing Countermeasures Of Letters And Visits Concerning Confiscation Of Land In China

Urbanization promotes the transformation and conversion of China’s society. Thereare various social contradictions and conflicts during the process of urbanization due tothe adjustment of production relations and interlace of all kinds of interests, and one of thekey conflicts lies in the―non-agricultural conversion‖of farmland. Urban construction andindustrial park planning are inevitably subject to sufficient land storage. In China, theownership and usufruct of land is separated, which leads to the fact that, when localgovernments confiscate the farmers’usufruct of land there will be a great controversyabout how to distribute the income of the land. Letters and Visits of the farmers appealingto the higher authorities for help caused by confiscation of land are extremely seriouswhich reveal the real picture of land conflicts.The thesis firstly classified the cases of letters and visits according to their causes,deeming that, in the context of urbanization, the letters and visits about confiscation ofland are the core of those cases. In view of this, this thesis elaborates the intrinsicmechanism of the causes of letters and visits from the perspective of defining propertyright, pointing out that the arrangement of property right in China is in the extreme vague.Particularly, the collectivized arrangement of the property of land provides the localgovernments with systematic inspiration in the process of confiscating land. In addition, inour country the system of land confiscation and compensation is far from perfect and nomechanism has been formed to protect the benefits of farmers. Therefore, in order to resistunreasonable confiscation of land by local governments, farmers tend to appeal to thehigher authorities to protect their interests in terms of letters and visits. Such letters andvisits usually lead to mass disturbances, since they are dealt with improperly by localgovernments because many different parties’interests are involved and farmers’ resistingemotion is of great extremeness. This causes great crisis to social governance. For thatreason, this thesis probe a step further into the issue of resolving the path to a systematicway of letters and visits of land confiscation. The author also brings out some suggestionslike defining the property of farmland expressly, perfecting the system of land confiscationand compensation, standardizing local governments’behavior of land confiscation and then some, with the purpose of cutting off the root of the causes of letters and visits.Finally, this thesis analyzes a typical case by applying the theoretical findings toanatomize the particularity of specific cases. Thus, the thesis reaches, perfects and adjuststhe relevant theoretical studies by empirical approach and ensures the scientificalness ofthe research findings. This study may serve as a fundament for further studies of landconflicts.