Special Sacrifice and Determination of Compensation Standard for Land Expropriation in the Urbanization Process—A Perspective of Legal Practice

In the current context of rapid global urbanization, China’s urbanization is also accelerating, and the rational planning and sustainable use of state land and space have become a growing concern. The expansion of urban geographic space is inevitably accompanied by the massive expropriation of rural land. The research objective of this article is to explore, from a jurisprudence perspective, under what circumstances land expropriation in urbanization has caused special sacrifices to farmers and what compensation standards have been determined by the Chinese courts after the special sacrifices have been caused. To achieve this research objective, the authors first identified the causal relation between the expansion of urbanization and conflicts over land expropriation in China through the empirical analysis method, and found that the expansion of urban geographic space has led to an increase in conflicts over land expropriation and that the land expropriation compensation system is the key to alleviating such conflicts. Secondly, by interpreting and summarizing the compensation standards for land expropriation in China’s legislation texts and judicial judgments through normative analysis, this article finds that the compensation standards for land expropriation currently adopted by the people’s courts of China are pluralistic and conflict with those in the legislation text. This article concludes that if land expropriation in urbanization leads to an infringement of civil liberties which results in a special sacrifice of citizens, such special sacrifice should be justly compensated. To effectively mitigate the conflicts concerning land expropriation in the urbanization process, China should build a unified compensation standard for land expropriation under the guidance of legislative text in the future, achieve a reconciliation between the doctrinal and practical compensation standards for land expropriation, and support the rule of law to guarantee the sustainable development of urbanization