Egalitarian Redistributions of Agricultural Land in China through Community Consensus: Findings from Two Surveys

Abstract

Most of China's rural communities have engaged in periodic reallocations of fields in order to re-equalize household landholdings on a per capita basis, despite a national law that prohibits this. The practice of re-equalizing landholdings tells us much about the rural household economy, farmers’ perceptions of property rights, and grass-roots community cohesion. Based on two questionnaire surveys of more than 600 villager small groups (former production teams) in Anhui Province, this article explains why such land reallocations have occurred, which types of villages have most often engaged in this egalitarian practice, and how and why the practice has altered during the last 15 years as rural conditions change.