ABSTRACT
Chapter 3 contends that the land question in China cannot be fully understood without looking at factors beyond the countryside. It documents how urban bias policies have affected rural areas in different regions in China since the 1990s. In inland provinces, the concentration of resources in urban areas undermined the surplus-generating capacity of land, forcing peasants to leave farmland even though they still retained the use rights. In coastal regions and areas surrounding cities, the rapid urbanization, since the 1990s, has motivated local governments to expropriate rural land on a large scale, turning tens of millions into landless peasants without secure livelihoods. In both cases, the industrious revolution, which was based on the economic activities of community-based smallholders, was undermined. The chapter also examined the swelling army of landless peasants and their land struggles.
