Research webinar discussing How Administrative Reclassification, FDI and Party Recruitment Condition the Governance of Land in China
Date: Tuesday 23 April, 2024
Time: 5:00PM – 6:10PM AEST
Location: Online
CSC International Research Webinar Series
The Local Party-State in Action: How Administrative Reclassification, FDI and Party Recruitment Condition the Governance of Land in China
Although prevailing theories explain urbanization through socio-economic changes and deemphasize its political roots, this article takes a more holistic approach to understand how rural land in China has been converted to constructed urban land. We acknowledge the importance of socio-economic drivers of urbanization, including pressures put on local officials to develop land in the search of foreign direct investment (FDI) and respond to economic incentives to convert agricultural land to urban land. At the same time, we evaluate how building a strong core of loyal ruling-party members in a locality facilitates this process in the long run.
We measure both the short-term and long-term roles of the party-state in China’s massive and rapid urban transformation. Acknowledging the effect of geographical features, demographic structure, as well as political incentives to attract foreign direct investment into local economic zones, we posit that the scale of local CCP members, political cycles, and administrative divisions further condition the expansion of urban land.
Our estimation confirms that in addition to the importance of economic incentives and the influx of FDI in a region, county governments that could count on a larger corps of CCP members have been more effective at controlling resistance against land-takings and accelerating urban development. The institution of administrative divisions is also consequential: both county-level cities and urban districts with larger urban populations result in further urbanization in the future.
About the speakers
Pierre F. Landry is a Professor of Government and Public Administration at the Chinese University of Hong Kong (香港中文大学), as well as a Research Fellow with the Research Center for the Study of Contemporary China at Peking University and an affiliate with the Program on Governance and Local Development at the University of Gothenburg.
Zheng Zhang is a Postdoctoral Fellow in the Department of Government and Public Administration at the Chinese University of Hong Kong. He investigates the key drivers of China’s urban development and evaluates its political impacts. He also studies Chinese party-building with a particular focus on the long-term consequences of its revolutionary history. He applies and develops geospatial methods in his research.
