Restructuring the State: Policy Transition of Construction Land Supply in Urban and Rural China

Abstract

Encountering the articulation of the strongness of local authorities and market forces in China’s development, attention has been paid to the changing central state which recentralised the regulation capability of localities which has more discretional power on resources utilisation, land for example, in the post-reform era. Yet it is still not clear-cut what drives the state rescaling in terms of land governance and by what ways. After dissecting the evolving policies and practices of construction land supply in China with the focus on the roles of state, we draw two main conclusions. First, the policy trajectory of construction land supply entails a complicated reconfiguration of state functions, which is driven by three interwoven relations: land–capital relation, peasant–state relation and rural–urban relation. Second, state rescaling in terms of the governance of construction land provision works via four important approaches: limited decentralism, horizontal integralism, local experimentalism and political mobilisationism. By reviewing the institutional arrangements of construction land provision and the state rescaling process behind them, this article offers a nuanced perspective to the state (re)building that goes beyond the simplified (vertical or horizontal) transition of state functions.