The Impossible in China’s Homestead Management: Free Access, Marketization and Settlement Containment

Chuanhao Tian and Li Fang
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Chuanhao Tian: Department of Government, Zhejiang Universality, Mengmin Wei Building, 866 Yuhangtang Road, Hangzhou 310000, China
Li Fang: Urban and Regional Planning and Design, Architecture Building, University of Maryland, College Park, MD 20740, USA

Sustainability, 2018, vol. 10, issue 3, 1-19

Abstract: Rural settlement containment is a challenging issue for many countries. It becomes especially daunting when people want rural settlements to serve multiple social goals. For example, in China, the central government seeks to simultaneously achieve three goals with the rural homestead management system. It wishes to: (1) contain rural settlements to preserve farmland; (2) entitle rural households to free homestead; and (3) encourage rural residents to accrue monetary income from homesteads. This paper, using survey data from 54 villages in China, shows that these three policy goals are an impossible combination. In fact, the latter two encourage settlement expansion. Moreover, with the latter two in place, we find that rural cadres expand homesteads more aggressively than others, exacerbating social and economic inequality within rural communities.

Keywords: rural settlement containment; homestead management; free access; homestead transaction (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2018
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (8)

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