How Can the Risk of Misconduct in Land Expropriation for Tract Development Be Prevented and Mitigated: A Study of “Good Land Governance” Inspection in China

In the context of China’s new round of land reform, narrowing the scope of land expropriation, standardising the procedures for land expropriation, and building a unified urban and rural construction land market have become the objectives of land expropriation reform. The new Land Management Law of the People’s Republic of China confirms land expropriation for tract development as a new situation for the land acquisition system. However, in the process of implementing the system, the new land acquisition mode is plagued by the dual dilemma of the falsification of public interests and the lack of a mechanism to realise public interests, which leads to the real risk of misconduct in standards. The concept of the coordination of interests and co-operative governance in “Good Land Governance” is a sure way to overcome this structural risk. The article analyses the causes through the lens of “Good Land Governance” and concludes that the risk of failure of the standards can be addressed through the binary public good remedy: On the one hand, from the perspective of coordination of interests, drawing on the principle of proportionality, the system can be built by improving the way of purposeful examination, so as to achieve the effect of preventing the risk of deflating and generalising public interests in order to achieve the effect of realising and reinforcing public interests. On the other hand, from the perspective of synergistic shared governance and drawing on the logic of land justice, institutional insight can be built by way of establishing a pattern of shared public interest, thus achieving the effect of preventing the risk of public interest erosion in order to achieve the effect of shared public interest replenishment.