Peasant protests over land seizures in rural China

ABSTRACT

This article reports key findings drawing on a database containing more than 12,000 protest news events in China from 2000 to 2018, including over 1500 protests against land expropriation. It finds that while social conflicts over land seizures continue to be the leading cause of protests in rural China, there was an upward trend for the number of related protest between 2000 and 2014 and a downward trend between 2014 and 2018. Under Xi Jinping, police were increasingly inclined to arrest and crack down on land seizure protesters. Failing to adequately deal with land disputes may undermine China's regime legitimacy.

KEYWORDS:

• Land disputes
• land expropriation
• repression
• news events data
• China

Acknowledgements

I thank Joel Andreas, the participants at the ‘Land Dispossession in China and India’ conference at Singapore Management University on 27–29 July 2018, and JPS's anonymous peer reviewers for their suggestions and constructive critiques of an earlier version of this paper. The data collection process for this study continued for more than ten years, and I am particularly grateful to the dozens of assistants who participated during that time—many of whom were graduate students in the master's program of Contemporary China Studies at National Tsing Hua University. This research was supported by a series of grants from Academia Sinica and the Ministry of Science and Technology in Taiwan.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 ‘Land expropriation’ in China in this article refers to ‘rural land expropriation.’ As noted, urban land in China is owned by the state, and by definition there is no ‘urban land expropriation.’

2 The cases were collected from a news database, Wisers (http://wisenews.wisers.net/wisenews), and three online news agencies. Wisers’ news database provides full-text content from nine news agencies or newspapers published in China and two newspapers in Hong Kong, including Zhongguo Xinwenshe [China News Service], Xinjingbao [The Beijing News], Nanfang Ribao [Nanfang Daily], Nanfang Zhoumo [Southern Weekly], Nanfang Dushibao [Southern Metropolis Daily], Huaxi dushibao [West China Metropolis Daily], Guangzhou Ribao [Guangzhou Daily], Shenzhen Wanbao [Shenzhen Evening News], Lanzhou Chenbao [Lanzhou Morning News], Pingguo Ribao [Apple Daily] and Mingbao [Ming Pao]. The three online news agencies include Radio Free Asia, Boxun [Boxun] and Dajiyuan [The Epoch Times].

Additional information

Funding

This research was supported by a series of grants from Academia Sinica and the Ministry of Science and Technology in Taiwan.

Notes on contributors

Chih-Jou Jay Chen

Chih-Jou Jay Chen is Professor and Research Fellow at the Institute of Sociology, Academia Sinica. He also teaches at National Tsing Hua University and National Taiwan University. He is an executive committee member of the International Sociological Association (2018–2022) and former President of the Taiwanese Sociological Association (2018–19).