• First comprehensive review of China's land reform
• Offers an in-depth analysis of the ways the Chinese state could create the necessary institutions to stimulate the emergence of a land market
• Analyzes the institutional foundations for China's successes in the rural reforms

Readership: Researchers, academics and graduate students in Chinese and development studies, and agencies working on land issues.

Peter Ho, University of Groningen, Centre for Development Studies

Preface
Introduction
1: The credibility of agricultural land tenure or why delibrate institutional ambiguity might work
2: Why the village has no power: land ownership disputes and customary tenure
3: Governing China's grasslands: the clash over state and collective property
4: Contested spaces: forest rights, registration and social conflict
5: Going, going, gone! A case-study of the wasteland auction policy
6: Between nationalization and privatization: common property as the third way?
Summary and concluding observations: the national debate on property law