Violence as development: land expropriation and China's urbanization

Abstract

A review of the literature on expropriation violence in China shows that most analysts explain violence instrumentally, as a means by which competing actors attempt to capture, redistribute or defend income from land development, an indicator of different spatial political ecologies, or a catalyst of villagers' politicization. But these explanations of violence assume (1) antagonism between rational, unitary collective actors and (2) that violence is of limited temporal duration, spatial and social reach. This paper builds on Escobar's proposition that violence is constitutive of development, to argue for an alternative view: violence authorizes and constitutes an inclusive, ongoing project of urbanization in China. Violence authorizes development, because the rural spaces surrounding cities and towns are characterized as institutionally insecure, disorderly, economically under-productive and incompatible with modernity. It comprises development, because it involves the forced urban improvement of the nation, rural property, governance, people and livelihoods. The concluding section of the paper briefly demonstrates the generalizability and analytical and methodological utility of the concept of violence as development by applying it to three ‘most different’ cases of land expropriation in China.

Keywords:

• rural
• land
• expropriation
• China
• urbanization
• violence
• development

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Erratum

Notes

¹Author's notes HZ 7 March 1999. Field research informing this paper was conducted on a dozen visits between 1999 and 2013, and primarily funded by the British Academy SRG 40650, Ford Foundation grant 1075 0591, Leverhulme Foundation Research Fellowship 2006/ 0381, and ARC DP 120104198.

²Amnesty International (2012, 56–63) documented nine deaths and 41 individuals self-immolating as a result of forced evictions between 2009 and 2011. However, the majority of these cases involved home evictions, not land expropriation.

³This criticism can be made of my own work. See, e.g., Sargeson (2008).

⁴Yu Jianrong estimates that since 1990, more than 14 million hectares of land have been expropriated. Much of that land has been used for infrastructure and mining (China Daily, 2010).

⁵In December 2009, US$1 = 6.81 yuan. In 2010, total national revenue from land exceeded 7 trillion yuan (China Daily 2011).

⁶Author's interview HZ 22 September 2012.

⁷Author's interview CS 10 May 2008.

⁸Author's interview HZ 12 April 2013.

⁹Author's interview YX 2 May 2008.

¹⁰Author's interview HZ 12 April 2013.

¹¹Authors' interview TX 22 April 2013.

¹²Author's interview 17 September 2012. One mu equals 0.0667 hectares.

Additional information

Sally Sargeson, a Fellow at the College of Asia and the Pacific, The Australian National University, is currently researching gender and substantive representation in villages, and the politics of land development. Her most recent books are Contemporary China: society and social change, co-authored with Tamara Jacka and Andrew Kipnis (Cambridge University Press, 2013) and Women, gender and rural development in China co-edited with Tamara Jacka (Edward Elgar, 2011).