Both China and India have witnessed extensive land expropriation by the states from farmers for use in industrialization and urbanization projects. Land conflicts have ensued from these developments. This paper poses two questions: 1) Why do we see a similar escalation of land dispossession in...

What drives people to protest in an authoritarian country? Drawing from a rich set of individual-level data from the China General Social Survey 2010, we address the question of protest participation by focusing on the factors of resources, and rewards vs. risks, that might be unique to...

This article examines the rationale behind municipal and local governments' pursuance of urbanization, and the political and socio-economic implications of the policy to move villagers from their farmland into apartment blocks in high-density resettlement areas, or “concentrated villages.”...

China has been held up as a modern-day exemplar of “market-preserving federalism”. This study challenges this popular belief by showing that its local governments face soft budget constraints. Fiscal indiscipline among subnational governments, which risks national indebtedness and...

This paper investigates the changing nature of state-business relations in China based on its recent privatization experience. Drawing on an analytical framework based on statist literature, this study seeks to explain why pervasive governance problem occurred during the privatization of local...

Rural credit cooperatives have become increasingly commercialized over the last decade. However, this does not spell the end of cooperative finance in rural China. Various new cooperative credit organizations have sprung up in recent years with endorsement from the central and local governments....

China, the world’s largest energy consumer and greenhouse gas emitter, appears China, the world’s largest energy consumer and greenhouse gas emitter, appears to have contradictory climate policies. While aggressively pursuing a renewable energy policy, Beijing is weak on a commitment to...