Establishing Land Assembly Districts : A Proposal to Chinese Law on Rural Land Takings

Chinese local governments have taken many rural lands in order to promote urbanization and modernization of the local rural areas, which, unfortunately, has given rise to many social conflicts. The current Chinese land taking laws have provided some guidance on the use of taking power, including the public interest requirement and the compensation requirement. However, these requirements are still insufficient. As can be observed from a series of cases, the fragmented ownership of rural residents caused a problem of anticommons, leading to huge transaction costs in the negotiation between governments and villagers. The mechanism of Land Assembly Districts, proposed by Professor Michael Heller and Ricks Hills, might be an effective way to handle this problem, since it can produce a relatively fair compensation for villagers, facilitate dialogue and communication, and prevent opportunism. This article considers the possibility of adopting this proposal by allowing the village committee to act collectively to negotiate the level of compensation with the Chinese local governments. This approach might effectively resolve numerous conflicts that arose in Chinese land taking events. The article also addresses the potential concern that the collective action might infringe upon the property rights of some dissenting villagers, from both theoretical and practical perspectives