The dilemma of land expansion and governance in rural China: A comparative study based on three townships in Zhejiang Province

Zhenning Yu, Cifang Wu, Yongzhong Tan and Xiaobin Zhang

Land Use Policy, 2018, vol. 71, issue C, 602-611

Abstract: Why do Chinese farmers continually utilize high-quality yet scarce cultivated land and extensively construct residences? Why is the Chinese government unable to control the continuous expansion of rural residential land after implementing strict economical and intensive land policies? To answer these questions, we launched a comparative study of three townships in Zhejiang Province. Based on a survey of 576 households and 72 rural government officials, this paper identified the determinants of rural house-building, explored different models of government intervention and provided recommendations for future government efforts. Results showed that (1) children, environment, investment, “mianzi”, and “feng shui” factors were the main driving forces that influence farmers to construct residential structures, although primary and secondary differences in the various townships existed; (2) three problems in the specific governance emerged: the lack of farmers’ unified action, failure to protect the rights of farmers, and the problem of meeting the funds demand of homestead replacement; (3) Actively exploring effective village planning, establishing linkages among stakeholders, effectively promoting farmers’ participation, creating a service-oriented government, and introducing a Public-Private Partnership mechanism may effectively address the problems related to rural residential expansion and governance. The results indicated a need to pay more attention to the motivations of rural house-building, the interests of stakeholders and the funding arrangements of the project in future government intervention.

Keywords: Rural residential land; The rural house-building craze; The governance dilemma; The homestead replacement; Comparative research; Rural China (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2018
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (19)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0264837717304908
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:lauspo:v:71:y:2018:i:c:p:602-611

DOI: 10.1016/j.landusepol.2017.09.054

Access Statistics for this article

Land Use Policy is currently edited by Jaap Zevenbergen

More articles in Land Use Policy from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Joice Jiang ().