In the first systematic documentation of the pattern and processes of land development taking place in China in the last two decades George C.S Lin advocates a fresh and innovative approach that goes beyond the privatization debate to probe directly into the social and political origins of land development. He demonstrates the special and paradoxical nature of China’s land development and challenges the perceived notion of a causal relationship between property rights definition, efficient land use, and sustained economic growth.

In contrast to the existing literature in which changes in urban and rural land are treated separately, the rural-urban interface is shown to be the most significant and contentious locus of land development where competition for land has been intensified and social conflicts frequently erupted.

Theoretically provocative and empirically well-grounded, Developing China provides a systematic, insightful, and authoritative account of the enormous development of China’s precious land resources. As such, it will be of great interest to scholars, students, and professional practitioners in the fields of development studies, political economy, regional political ecology, planning, economics, geography, land use management, and sustainable development with a special focus on contemporary China under market transition.

"[T]his empirically rich and theoretically informed book is an important contribution to understanding the complex land-power relationships in China and probes us to think deeper about the roles of land and space" - Choon-Piew Pow, Environment and Planning A 2010, volume 42

George C.S. Lin is Head of the Department of Geography in the University of Hong Kong. His research interests include China’s urban development and urbanization, land use and land management, the growth of urbanism, rural industrialization and regional development in the Pearl River Delta, transnationalism, cross-border population mobility, and the geography of Chinese diaspora.