ABSTRACT
Efforts to build a property rights regime in the People’s Republic of China (PRC) have been characterized by tensions between acceptance of liberal legal models and retention of socialist principles associated with other areas of China’s socio-economic and legal development policy. The globalized international discourse of private property ideals associated with liberal capitalism serves as context for understanding legal reform efforts in China.1 In the international liberal discourse of property rights, ideals of effi ciency and individual liberty privilege private property discourses of economism and republicanism, and result in the entrenchment of private property into law and popular culture.2 The expansion of these regimes through the process of globalization promotes local acceptance of liberal standards of property law by developing economies even as the expansion invites confl ict over assimilation of underlying norms and values. The development of China’s legal regime for protecting property rights reveals dynamics and outcomes of ongoing normative tensions between globalized liberal ideology and local legal and political culture. Challenges also arise around the organizational structures and processes for implementing property rights in China.
