Understanding local governments’ tactics to guard against land-expropriationrelated mass incidents (LERMIs) in China: A case study from Huizhou
Siliang Wang, Shukui Tan
As a limited and multipurpose resource, land is not only closely tied to issues of livelihoods, identity and power, but one of the most controversial issues and a major source of conflict. Developing countries are always faced with acute social conflicts over land in the context of rapid urbanization, as the urban growth means not only the flow of rural population to urban areas, but land transitions from rural to urban status. Attention to land-related conflicts including ways to prevent and resolve them constitutes an important area for policy and research. Plenty of literature have discussed such combined policy instruments regarding to the land conflict governance as adequate compensation packages, effective and flexible mediation, substantial public participation, conflict transformation, and the sustainable social security of land-deprived peasants. The potential of an initially limited land conflict turning violent makes it to be a serious challenge for the world authorities, China is no exception.With the dramatic compression of the process of urbanization it is experiencing, the consequent land conflicts and even violence over forced land expropriation has been significantly intensified. Since the collective social protests that disrupt public order are always conceptualized as the term of “mass incident” in China’s political context, we define the mass incidents caused by unreasonable or illegal land expropriation as landexpropriation- related mass incidents (LERMIs) in this paper. In detail, they refer to large-scale violent land conflicts (e.g. collective petition, surrounding or attacking government buildings, head-on confrontation with responsible staffs) initiated by land-deprived peasants that aim to grouse about unfair compensation, rough treatment, obstructed appeal channel, and interest damage during land expropriation. As a popular material widely cited in the paper and media indicated, the proportion of LERMIs in rural mass incidents was about 65%, it is thus widely recognized that land conflicts, especially LERMIs, increasingly contribute to the social instability in rural China, moreover, it draws growing concern among governments, civil society networks, and scholars about the linkages between government’s interventions and the occurrence of LERMIs.
Event: Land Governance in an Interconnected World_Annual World Bank Conference on Land and Poverty_2018
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