Author：Ya Ping Wang
Date：2012-03-01
Summary：
Landless farmers and suburban village redevelopment are two important issues of urbanisation in China. While some redevelopment projects have created few millions among villagers many others lead to the loss of life security and steady income for villagers. This paper examines the village redevelopment using a village in Beijing as an example. It describes problems encountered by villagers and discusses constitutional and legal confusions over the definition of rural collective ownership of land. Village collective ownership should be equivalent to the state ownership, not part of it. The land under rural village control should be treated as their collectively owned private property. This however does not mean that the state should not have any control over the development of the land. The state should provide regulations to protect the collective ownership and share the increase in land values with farmers through tax or other charges. In this way, the state will be on villagers’ side in negotiation a development deal and will ensure the share of the development profit among the most needed and entitled to.
