Chapter 2. The Land-Enclosure Movement of the 1990s

In the early 1950s, when the Chinese Communist Party carried out its policy on land reform, rules and regulations on land use were established consistent with the terms of a planned economy: the state controlled all land and exerted authority to approve its use for various purposes. Not until the passage of the "Land Management Law" (>i>tudi guanli fa>/i>) in 1986 was the old system that had existed for more than twenty years fundamentally altered. The result was the coexistence in the rural economy of two diametrically opposed approaches to land use: one via administrative planning and the other by the leasing of land. Also occurring at this time was the introduction into China's rural life of the embryonic concept of a land market. But implementing new rules and regulations in this complex and often contradictory situation was no easy task. It was in this context that the "land-enclosure movement" emerged in which primarily nonmarket measures were employed to bring about a substantial redistribution of land resources.