Land Reform and Rural China: An Update from the Field

* Roy Prosterman, Founder and Chair Emeritus, Rural Development Institute, and Professor Emeritus, University of Washington School of Law
* Li Ping, Attorney and Beijing Office Chief Representative, Rural Development Institute

Law Committee

Can secure land rights for China's rural citizens help narrow the urban-rural divide, reduce unrest, improve rural wealth and stability and reduce urban migration?

Between 750 - 800 million people live in China's countryside, where they depend on agriculture for a substantial part of their livelihood. Although this rural majority initially reaped great benefits from decollectivization, they have lagged further and further behind their urban counterparts. As rural land is taken for urban development, rural unrest is growing, with thousands of demonstrations and incidents of instability annually, most of them land-related.

During the past decade, the central government has crafted a series of laws, declarations, and policy decisions intended to protect Chinese farmers' economic interests. A tug-of-war has ensued between the center and the local cadres over the implementation of the legal rules affecting farmers' land rights. Much depends on the resolution of this contest: whether farmers can safely invest in their land and gain meaningful land wealth to cushion urban migration; whether the urban-rural gap can begin to close; whether rural stability will grow or deteriorate; and whether rural China will move towards being a society where the rule of law prevails.

In 2008, the Seattle-based Rural Development Institute (RDI), which has worked in rural China for more than twenty years, conducted the fourth in a series of large-scale, independent surveys on these crucial issues. Join two attorneys from RDI--Mr. Roy Prosterman and Mr. Li Ping--who have been closely involved in RDI's work in China, to discuss the survey results, the implications for China's overall development and critical further measures needed. Please join us for this discussion.

More details on the speakers and RDI: http://www.amcham.org.hk/images/Events/flyers/rdi_speakers_bio.pdf