"Public-private Partnership" and Social Conflict over Land Expropriation in China's Suburban Villages

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Abstract: In the context of weakening governance capacity in suburban villages, higher-level administrative pressures and profiteering motivations, China's grassroots governments have innovated land expropriation strategies and are engaged in two types of "public-private partnerships". In contrast to partnerships with market players that outsource the land expropriation task—which is subject to institutional legality—partnerships with the so-called "rich and grey" (fuhui) powerful villagers absorb these community members into village leadership, with the expectation that land expropriation can be sped up through private power. The "rich and grey" not only have private resources but also have some characteristics of gangs; they thus are resourceful in both legal and illegal channels, and hence might be said to operate in a "grey (murky) area". However, as a consequence, regardless of the government control over this private power, structural conflicts emerge. Such is the growing problem in rural China, especially in suburban villages, that can be resolved only if efforts to address land expropriation are carried out in coordination with the property rights reform, and with preventing administrative abuse of power. Hence, what is "public" (i.e. village land) could be effectively demarcated from what is "private" (profit-seeking agents), and legal, market-based agreements could be made that are fair and profitable to all parties.