Since the advent in 1978 of economic reform in China, the essence of the ongoing transition from a planned to a market economy has been a redistribution of social capital and a readjustment of various interest relationships. Throughout this process, what I term the "marketization of power"...

In the early 1950s, when the Chinese Communist Party carried out its policy on land reform, rules and regulations on land use were established consistent with the terms of a planned economy: the state controlled all land and exerted authority to approve its use for various purposes. Not until...