ABSTRACT
The chapter reviews the development and changes that have taken place in the institutions related to land and its usage, emphasizing the differences that existed among institutions before/after the 1949 “liberation”, and before/after the on-going economic reform’s commencement in 1978. It focuses on some findings from our empirical studies on the post-1978 Shanghai and shows how land has been treated as a means to help achieve the all-important economic development. The chapter describes the interactions among institutions of land use, city planning, enterprise reforms, and delegation of administrative powers between local governments that determine the geographic pattern of spatial development, are to be clarified. Changes in the institutions related to land development are among the central elements of the economic reforms in mainland China that started in 1978. There have been drastic changes in the conception of land held by the Chinese Communists since the economic reforms went under way.
