The Redevelopment of China's Construction Land: Practising Land Property Rights in Cities through Renewals

Existing literature on China's urbanization focuses primarily on the expansion of cities and towns, with little attention being paid to urban renewals. The wasteful use of urban land has conventionally been attributed to the ambiguous definition and ineffective protection of property rights. This study examines recent practices in urban redevelopment in Guangzhou – a site chosen by the central authorities to pilot urban renewals (sanjiu gaizao). The research identifies a local practice in which institutional changes are made not in the delineation of land property rights but instead in the redistribution of the benefits to be made from land redevelopment. Current users of the land are offered a share of the land conveyance income previously monopolized by the state as an incentive to encourage them to engage in urban renewal. Land-use intensity and efficiency have increased, along with social exclusion and marginalization. Research findings cast doubt over the perceived notion that the uniform and unambiguous definition of property rights is the prerequisite for improved land-use efficiency and call for a critical evaluation of the current urban renewal policies that completely ignore the interests of the migrant population who outnumber local residents by a large margin. 中国城市化的现有文献主要关注城市规模的扩张而较少涉猎城市内部的旧城改造。城市土地的低效利用通常被归因于土地产权的不明确。本研究基于中央政府最近在广州所试行的 “三旧改造”, 探讨城市内部的旧区重建。研究揭示广州土地制度改革着力于利益之分配而非产权的重新划分。土地出让收入由原来国家垄断改为与原土地使用者分享以激发其参与旧城改造的积极性。 “三旧改造” 虽然提高了土地利用的密度和效率, 但是也加剧了对低层市民和外来人口的排斥和边缘化。研究结果质疑土地产权明晰定义是否为用地效率提高的必备先决条件, 并呼吁反思现行旧城改造中无视为数众多的外来人口之生存空间的不公政策。