Do ambiguous property rights matter? Collective value logic in Lin Village

Since the 1980s, landed property rights have been the subject of heated debate in China. On the one hand, the OECD and many mainstream economists, China’s road to prosperity is hampered by its system of vaguely-defined rights to land which, according to these analysts, is preventing the efficient use of land and causing social conflicts. On the other hand, critics of private property rights theory argue that the axiomatic denunciation of ambiguous property rights one-sidedly privileges economic efficiency at the expense of social, cultural and ethical considerations. This polarised debate raises the question, ‘Do ambiguous property rights matter?’ To address this question, this article analyses the negotiations around a development project in Lin Village, Xiamen. In this relatively affluent urban village, differing conceptions of the ownership of land have not posed any impediment to the joint development projects successfully carried out by villagers, Lin Village Collective and the local government. This evidence questions the claim that a private property rights system is prerequisite for transformative urban development irrespective of context. Lin Village’s land use system, an alternative to private land tenure relations, suggests that the collective value logic, defended by land economists of the original institutional economics school, offers an alternative to the private, exclusionary model of urban development.