Common property rights and land reallocations in rural China: Evidence from a village survey

Abstract

Despite the individualization of use rights in farming, land in rural China remains collectively owned. As villagers are entitled to an equal share of this common property resource, the latter is allegedly subject to frequent and village-wide reallocations in response to population growth-a practice that harms farmers' tenure security. The results of a village survey, however, fail to substantiate these claims. First, reallocations are on the whole infrequent and confined mainly to a partial nature, the latter of which is found to enhance farmers' perceived likelihood of farming the same plots in the future. Second, certain village characteristics, most notably land endowment and off-farm income opportunity have the favorable effect of minimizing the transaction costs of land reallocation. (C) 2000 elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.