Research News | Professor TAO Ran’s New Book Between People and Land: Urban and Rural Land Reform under China's Growth Model Was Published by Liaoning People's Publishing House
Recently, Prof TAO Ran of the School of Humanities and Social Science of CUHK-Shenzhen published his new book Between People and Land: Urban and Rural Land Reform under China's Growth Model with Liaoning People's Publishing House. With a total of more than 400,000 words, the book is the first part of Prof TAO’s trilogy in China's economic transformation.
Part 1 About the Book
Between People and Land is a book aimed at ordinary people that comprehensively describes China's economic growth model over the past four decades and strategies for solving problems in its future development.
On the basis of the history, evolution and theoretical basis of China's existing economic growth, industrialization and urbanization models, People and Land analyses the multi-faceted impact of the past economic growth model on the national economy, social development and urban and rural land use, and finally gives reasonable and feasible directions to urban and rural land reform with specific policy mix.
In each subdivision of urban and rural land reform, Prof TAO moderately adjusted the solutions based on the existing policy framework, thus gradually alleviating existing contradictions. His solutions to land reform are neither complicated reinventions nor inefficient patches, but a series of reform gradually implemented through “incentive and inclusiveness”.
Catalogue
Preface How to transform with a new “Chinese model”
Introduction The overall challenges of China's urban and rural land system
1. Contradictions and challenges
2. Progress and limitations of urban and rural land system reform
3. Abstracts of chapters
Chapter I: China's Growth Model and the Rise of "Land Finance"
1. Two backgrounds
2. Two popular alternative hypotheses
3. Structural changes and mechanisms that drive China's growth
4. A systematic analysis framework
5. China's growth model
Chapter II: Strategic Transfers and Multiple Distortions under "Land Finance"
1. Strategic transfer under the “land finance” model
2. Excessive land urbanization and incomplete population urbanization
3. Housing price bubbles and difficulties in establishing real estate regulation
4. “Land Finance” and local debt risk
Chapter III: Reform of land acquisition and listing of rural collectively-owned commercial construction land
1. Slow progress in reforming the land acquisition system
2. Controversy over land acquisition policy
3. Listing of rural collectively-owned commercial construction land and its prospect
4. Solutions to listing of rural collectively-owned commercial construction land
5. Land expropriation and public interest
Chapter IV: “Returning the rising price to the Public”, Fair Compensation, and the Legality of Land Expropriation
1. Compensation standards for land expropriation and legality of land expropriation
2. From “resettlement of retained land” to “resettlement of retained property”
3. rediscuss “returning the rising price to the public”: the formation and distribution of land VAT
4. China’s practice and direction of reform
5. A summary of the reform plans
Chapter V: Limitations and Opportunities of Land Reform in Traditional Agriculture
1. From “the separation of two rights” to “the separation of rural land ownership rights, contract rights, and management rights”
2. Confirmation of agricultural land rights and mortgage dilemma
3. The dilemma and reform of the rural homestead system
4. Solutions to the reform of land system in traditional agriculture
Chapter VI: Arable Land Protection and Land Indicator Trading
1. Existing arable land protection system
2. Limitations of the existing arable land protection system
3. The policy of “development rights of lands” and “linking new land used for urban construction with the decrease of land used for rural construction”
4. Zhejiang Model
5. Top-down design of transferable development rights and market-based transaction
Chapter VII Industrial Upgrading and Redevelopment of Inefficient Land in the Cities
1. Industrial land: challenges, policies, and explorations
2. Practice in the South China Sea: “Industrial land renewal” + “Industrial land transformation into residential land”
3. Generalized discussion based on a simulated case
Chapter VIII: The Dilemma of Urban Renewal and Innovation in its Model
1. The dilemma of anti-commons
2. Experience of the “‘three old’ transformation” in the Pearl River Delta
3. Innovation in urban renewal model: two competitions and one transformation
4. A feasibility calculation
Conclusion
Acknowledgements
Part 2 About Prof TAO Ran
Professor TAO Ran
Director of Public Policy Programme
Prof TAO Ran is a professor and Director of Public Policy Programme at School of Humanities and Social Science, CUHK-Shenzhen. He received a bachelor's degree from Lanzhou University in 1993; a master's degree in science from Peking University in 1996; a master's degree and a doctorate degree in economics from the University of Chicago, respectively in 1997 and 2002. He conducted postdoctoral research at China Centre of the Oxford University; served as associate fellow at the Chinese Academy of Sciences from 2003 to 2008; worked as a professor at the School of Economics, Renmin University of China from 2009 to 2021; and joined the Chinese University of Hong Kong, Shenzhen in 2022.
Prof TAO focuses on various fields in relation to China’s economic transformation and development, including development economics, institutional economics, the political economy logic of transformation and growth, registration reform of land and household in the process of urbanization, local governance and public finance. Prof TAO has led two key projects funded by the National Natural Science Foundation of China, and is currently leading a major project sponsored by the National Social Science Fund of China Program. In 2020 and 2021, Prof TAO was on the list of “Chinese Highly Cited Researchers in Theoretical Economics” by Elsevier, a global leader in information and analytics, for two consecutive years. In addition, TAO’s policies have made great impacts in the reform of household registration, land, housing, etc.
Prof TAO has published more than 100 academic papers in well-known journals home and abroad, including 61 on Chinese core social science journals, of which 13 are on authoritative social science journals. In terms of English papers, Prof TAO has published 48 papers on SSCI journals, covering economics, sociology, politics, demography, urban studies, etc. In 2017, his co-authored paper published on American Journal of Sociology (Volume 122 Number 6, May 2017) has won the Distinguished Contribution to Scholarship Article Award (Best Published Article Award) in Collective Behavior & Social Movements by the American Sociological Association. In addition, Prof TAO has published three Chinese books, including Between People and Land: Urban and Rural Land Reform under China's Growth Model, the first part of his trilogy in China's economic transformation that published in 2023.