East Asian Developmental Path and Land-Use Rights in China

Ganesh K Trichur

doi:10.5195/jwsr.2012.488

Abstract

This paper highlights contemporary Chinas long-term continuities with the historical EastAsian developmental path in relation to its post-1978 revival of market-economy traditions. Therevival of market economy traditions does not exemplify the unfolding of processes associatedwith the one-size-fits-all Washington Consensus. Rural land reforms were driven from belowand strongly influenced policy changes from above. Neither rural nor urban land use relationssuggest a more general unfolding of neoliberal processes of capitalist accumulation bydispossession. Contemporary Chinese land relations reflect the effects of continuities withhistorical East Asian regional traditions more strongly than do some discontinuities andruptures that emerged in the conjuncture of the mid-1980s. These continuities remain moreimportant in understanding the future of the China-led East Asian region. Like the Ming andQing dynasties, Chinas Party-State is sharply focused on problems of governance. Retaininglegitimacy and recreating a welfare state to promote harmonious development rather thangrowth fetishism appears to characterize Chinas current trajectory.

Highlights

In this paper I relate the historical traditions that underlie an East Asian developmental path with the evolution of land use rights in post-1978 China
Contemporary migrant workers’ struggles against exploitation in China’s eastern coastal economic zones and unemployed workers’ struggles for livelihood in the aftermath of the restructuring of the State-owned Enterprises (SOEs) in China are often claimed as evidence for the effects of processes of accumulation by dispossession promoted by neoliberal states following the Washington Consensus (Harvey 2005)
A robust China-led world developmental path depends upon sustainable reproduction of Chinese growth and development patterns. Positive signs in this direction were signaled in the shift in priorities towards sustainable development at the turn of the millennium under the Hu Jintao-Wen Jiabao leadership. Part of this shift in priorities is towards more equitable and welfare-oriented rural and urban land-use relations that have for long been a well-defined feature of the historical East Asian Developmental Path

Summary

INTRODUCTION

In this paper I relate the historical traditions that underlie an East Asian developmental path with the evolution of land use rights in post-1978 China. Contemporary migrant workers’ struggles against exploitation in China’s eastern coastal economic zones and unemployed workers’ struggles for livelihood in the aftermath of the restructuring of the State-owned Enterprises (SOEs) in China are often claimed as evidence for the effects of processes of accumulation by dispossession promoted by neoliberal states following the Washington Consensus (Harvey 2005) These claims, do not acknowledge the strong influence of historical East Asian regional traditions on late-Imperial and contemporary China. Positive signs in this direction were signaled in the shift in priorities towards sustainable development at the turn of the millennium under the Hu Jintao-Wen Jiabao leadership Part of this shift in priorities is towards more equitable and welfare-oriented rural and urban land-use relations that have for long been a well-defined feature of the historical East Asian Developmental Path. While there are environmental challenges to the East Asian developmental path, these challenges have not yet displaced more durable East Asian environmental legacies

HISTORICAL FEATURES OF THE EAST ASIAN DEVELOPMENTAL PATH

Environmental Legacies

Findings

CONCLUSION