LDPI Working Paper 18. Upheaval in Chinese Villages. A Case Study of Rural Land Expropriation for “Large-Scale” Commercial Farming in Rural China

Abstract

Tens of millions of Chinese peasants are in the process of being uprooted from their agricultural land and farmhouses, leaving them in the short run with few means to sustain their families. This study examines a very recent campaign in China to consolidate land for large-scale commercial farming, analyzing three major actors, namely agribusiness entrepreneurs, local government officials, and peasants. This example of very large-scale rural land grabbing is tightly connected to the new stateled campaign of “Constructing a Socialist New Countryside.” By comparing two models of land consolidation, defined by the author as “reversible” and “irreversible,” she argues that the top-down implementation of the campaign favors the “irreversible” model, thus causing many unintended consequences, including forced land dispossession, a rise in agrarian capitalist land accumulation, and increased hardships on vast numbers of peasants who have now lost much of their autonomy, while becoming precarious wage laborers