ABSTRACT
For most of the years prior to economic reforms, the issue of land use control and land development had been dealt with in China as an integral part of the socialist planned economy in isolation from the external forces of global capitalism. The situation has changed profoundly since the 1980s when the Chinese economy reintegrated itself into the world economy. As explained earlier in Chapter 4, increased marketization and global exposure of the Chinese economy since the 1980s has been one of the fundamental forces pushing China to make major institutional changes in land use control and land development so that a socialist market economy could meet the interests of global capitalism and comply with the international standards (yu guoji jiegui). In contrast to the process of rural economic reform which owed its origins to some spontaneous local initiatives at the grass-roots level, the emergence of a new land system and land market in China has been inseparable from the influence and interests of foreign investors including those from Hong Kong and Taiwan. To understand the nature and dynamics of land development in the recent decades, it is necessary to examine how a regional economy undergoing marketization and globalization has taken on the challenges posed by such new forces as the interests of global capitalism, intensified place competition domestically and internationally, and last but not least, the reshuffling of the power relation between the central state and local governments.
