ABSTRACT
Real estate development in modern China is not just a private enterprise. This reality may arise, at least in part, from China's recent attempts to harmonize the private right to use property with the public ownership of lands that its nominally socialist system. Public-private partnerships of the type described in the text may thus reflect China's stated goal of merging socialist principles with the incentives that the desire to earn personal profit can create. All of these public attributes of private development can create difficulties and costs for Chinese developers, conflicts of interest for local government officials, and problems for Chinese society more generally. The government routinely demands that developers build roads and sidewalks and install necessary utilities, just as most American jurisdictions would do. The infrastructure projects typically involve significant investment by the private sector, catalyzed by government incentives. In Shanghai's Planning Museum summarizing the approach cities such as Shanghai have taken toward the modernization process.
