Land dispossession, rural gentrification and displacement: Blurring the rural-urban boundary in Chengdu, China

Abstract

Rural China is experiencing rapid socioeconomic transformations, including suburbanisation and rural gentrification. In this paper, we argue that to understand these processes, we have to take into account the changes in rural land rights. Based on an analysis of a pilot case for China's rural collective commercial construction land (RCCCL) reform policy at the edge of Chengdu City, we demonstrate how state-led rural land reform paves the way for stealthy land dispossession and rural gentrification. Our argument in this paper is threefold. First, given the entrenched collective land use rights of rural villagers in China, state-led land commodification, is a necessary condition for rural gentrification in China. Secondly, the prospect of capital accumulation through rural gentrification motivates entrepreneurial public and private actors to promote such reforms in ways that dispossess rural peasants and peasant collectives of their land (use) rights. Thirdly, the particularities of dispossession through state-led land reform result in particular experiences of displacement and displacement pressure on the side of affected rural communities. Our findings contribute to the decentring of rural gentrification theory, in that they underline the necessity to include the particular histories of land commodification and dispossession in our understanding of rural gentrification in contexts where rural land is partly or wholly shielded from market influences. In the case of China, dynamics of rural gentrification are blurring the rural-urban boundary on three dimensions: political economy (land use governance), material infrastructure (landscape and residential architecture), and socio-cultural practices (rural livelihoods and identity).