China's rapid urban development has attracted attention worldwide. So far most research has focused on the establishment of land markets and the institutional framework of land development. The complicated land politics behind the development of markets are largely unknown to the outside world. You-tien Hsing, building upon twenty years of experience researching Chinese development, investigates land-centered politics. This book is a remarkable outcome of her painstaking multi-city fieldwork and provides a convincing explanation of the land-driven development machine in China.
The development of market mechanisms is a process of great transformation, triggering a series of social changes. The Great Urban Transformation investigates how the politics of land are played out in the context where markets were absent and have emerged during the reform era. The task of setting up a market is not easy, and the notion of the “establishment of a land market” in the literature is inevitably over-simplified....
