Compensation inequity in resettlement: a rural construction land transfer project in Shanxi, China

© 2018 Dr Tao XueLand has long been a source of conflict in rural China. In pursuit of land for development, local authorities have initiated resettlement projects, some of which have led to social unrest and mass incidents. In response, the central government has intervened with policies such as the Farmland Redline for food security and quota controls for land provision in local jurisdictions. The most recent intervention is Rural Construction Land Transfer (RCLT in short), a policy that provides local governments with quotas for converting farmland to construction land by resettling farmers from their spacious farmhouses to relatively small apartments. Officially it is claimed that RCLT is entirely voluntary and does not encroach on resettlers’ interests. However, the existing resettlement literature suggests that those resettled usually receive inadequate compensation after resettlement, and that compensation is not equally distributed among the affected. This thesis aims to understand how RCLT has been implemented and to examine the factors that shape compensation. To achieve this aim, two main research questions are posed: 1) How has the RCLT policy been implemented in China?; 2) To what extent does household compensation differ among the resettled, and what factors contribute to any divergence? The thesis draws on Allen’s multiple modalities of power to examine the interactions between state actors and three groups of resettled farmers. It responds to the research questions through an investigation of policy implementation in a rural county - Zezhou - focusing on the resettled households’ bargaining process with policy initiators. An in-depth case study is presented, drawing on semi-structured interviews and direct observation, as well as questionnaires and secondary data collection. This thesis first finds that RCLT was easily distorted through a lack of effective supervision and monitoring from higher-level government agencies. It also finds that heterogeneous compensation among resettled households largely resulted from divergent power relations amongst state actors and the resettled households over the period of compensation distribution. Further, compensation regulations were influenced by rural politics, such as guanxi and kinship in the village, which played an important role in compensation design and distribution. On a practical level, these findings suggest that higher levels of government should refine policy regulations for improved social justice and equity in such resettlement projects, and also that those affected should play a more influential role in designing compensation. On a theoretical level, this case shows how multiple modalities of power feature in rural politics and state-society relations, including manipulation, seduction, and persuasion