A,
Redesigning Rural Life:
Relocation and In Situ Urbanization in a Shandong _77
Village
OF TECH
by
JUL 2 92014
Saul Kriger Wilson
LIBRARIES
Submitted to the School of Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences
in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of
Bachelor of Science
at the
MASSACHUSETTS INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY
September 2014
Massachusetts Institute of Technology 2014. All rights reserved.
Signature redacted
Author...........
Major Departure in Humanities: Asian and Asian Diaspora Studies
Signature redacted
Department of Mathematics
July 9, 2014
Certified by.
Yasheng Huang
Professor of Global Economics and Management
Sloan School of Management
Thesis Supervisor
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Accepted by
/i /
Accepted by ..
Ian Condry
Chairman
Deportment of Global Studies and Languages
Signature redacted
UTE0.y
............
Deborah Fitzgerald
Kenan Sahin Dean
School of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences
2
Redesigning Rural Life:
Relocation and In Situ Urbanization in a Shandong Village
by
Saul Kriger Wilson
Submitted to the School of Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences
on July 9, 2014, in partial fulfillment of the
requirements for the degree of
Bachelor of Science
Abstract
The Chinese government's attempts to improve village public service provision, limit
the loss of arable land, and coordinate urbanization have converged in land readjustment schemes to rebuild some villages as more densely populated "rural communities."
I present a case study on a financially troubled, partially complete village reconstruction project in Shandong. Villagers outside the leadership were minimally involved in
project planning, and the village leadership put pressure on villagers to move. However, the pressure to move was not due to an absence of formal property rights for
villagers; reluctant villagers agreed to move because they could not afford to offend
the village government.
I argue that architectural and urban design were central to villagers' reactions
to village reconstruction and to the project's social and economic outcomes. The
design of the relocation townhomes sought to engineer the urbanization of villagers'
lifestyles; so far, although some aspects of village life have changed, many villagers
have persisted in "rural" behaviors. This is partly because, at least in the short term,
the design and urban amenities of the case village's relocation housing constitute a
burden on the poor, the elderly, and the crippled. These populations, who do not like
the design of the new houses, are the most likely to live in them year round; younger
and wealthier villagers, who often like the new housing more, spend much of the year
engaged in migrant labor. Despite apparent local control over the project, villagers
did not perceive village elections as a means of resolving their concerns.
Thesis Supervisor: Yasheng Huang
Title: Professor of Global Economics and Management
Sloan School of Management
3
4
Acknowledgments
I owe many thanks to my two advisors on this project, HUANG Yasheng and Ian
Condry, for taking me on and helping me this past year. They were always happy to
make time to chat about my work. Ian generously found funding from the Department of Foreign Languages & Literatures to support my fieldwork, without which
my research would have been exclusively in the dungeon-like bowels of a dull library.
Yasheng helped push me to consider the longer term economic consequences of village
reconstruction and to look at it in the context of urban economics. Both have offered
substantive and constructive feedback.
This project would not have been possible without the help of HOU Yue and
Isabelle Tsakok. Both generously shared their academic contacts in China, helping
me get into China in January 2014 and, in turn, to find a field site.
In China,
PENG Chao of the Ministry of Agriculture's Research Center for Rural Economy
introduced me to ZHANG Xiaorong and thereby made my fieldwork possible; just as
importantly, he helped mentor me as a researcher. "Max" MENG Tianguang invited
me to Tsinghua University, hosted me in its Political Science Department, and was
always eager to help; it was through affiliation with Tsinghua that I conducted my
fieldwork. HU Biliang of Beijing Normal University arranged a seminar in which I
presented my preliminary findings and received helpful feedback.
This thesis stems from research conducted with ZHANG Xiaorong, with LIU Jia
serving as a translator. Both were invaluable to the collection of data. Xiaorong
helped shape the direction of the research and was a steadfast advocate for keeping
the inquiry focused. The fieldwork itself is best seen as a joint work of Xiaorong
and myself. LIU Jia contributed a knack for conversation that made our interviews
far more productive when she was present.
Her interest in the changing cost of
living proved prescient. Besides their substantive contributions to this research, both
Xiaorong and LIU Jia deserve credit for tolerating the intensive effort that was our
week or so of fieldwork: long days, cold weather, the occasional awkwardness of human
subjects requirements, and a temperamental boss (me).
5
Of course, the project was completely dependent upon information from local
officials and villagers. While I cannot thank them by name, they provided essential
insight into local opinions and conditions.
In preparing to go to China, I had planned to study rural inequality. When I
discovered that the village I was studying was being rebuilt, I decided to change my
focus to village reconstruction. I was prepared better to do so thanks to conversations
with XIAO Yuan and YIN Jie during the preceding semester, and their advice and
conversation has been valuable during the preparation of this thesis.
The written project presented here was shaped by several years of coursework
and discussions with friends and colleagues. Dan Borgnia, although not particularly
interested China, contributed his trademark constructive disagreeableness to many
a long conversation on rural China. This thesis is a richer, better thought through
product as a result. Lucas Orona and Anna Ho similarly withstood many an unsought
conversation on my research; my parents, W. Stephen Wilson and Norma Kriger, were
victims of many more. Conversations with and, in some cases, written feedback from
Iza DING, Nifer Fasman, HOU Yue, Isabelle Tsakok, and ZHANG Xiaorong have
helped shape this thesis. Of course, what errors remain are mine alone.
6
Contents
Introduction ....................................................................................................................................................... 9
Background on Village Reconstruction Programs .......................................................................... 12
2.1. Rural Planning ....................................................................................................................................... 13
2.2. Land Policies .......................................................................................................................................... 14
2.3. Prevalence & Prognosis ..................................................................................................................... 16
3. Research on V illage Reconstruction ..................................................................................................... 19
3.1. China .......................................................................................................................................................... 19
3.2. A broad ....................................................................................................................................................... 21
4. B ackground on O ld Spring V illage .......................................................................................................... 26
4.1. M ethods .................................................................................................................................................... 26
4.2. G eograp hy ............................................................................................................................................... 26
4.3. Econom y ................................................................................................................................................... 27
4.4. D em ograp hy ........................................................................................................................................... 28
4.5. Intra-V illage M igration ...................................................................................................................... 29
S. Project Plan ..................................................................................................................................................... 30
5.1. O verarching Plan .................................................................................................................................. 30
5.2. Planning Process .................................................................................................................................. 31
5.3. Financing and Subsidies .................................................................................................................... 33
5.4. N atural Villages ..................................................................................................................................... 35
5.5. Construction Land ................................................................................................................................ 36
5.6. Com m ercial D evelopm ent Plans .................................................................................................... 36
5.7. Relocation H om es ................................................................................................................................ 37
6. Relocation and Com pensation ................................................................................................................ 39
6.1. V illager M otivations ............................................................................................................................ 39
6.2. Methods to Extract Signatures & Retribution .......................................................................... 41
6.3. Com pensation ........................................................................................................................................ 46
6.4. Success Rate ........................................................................................................................................... 49
7. R elocation H ousing: D esign & Attitudes ............................................................................................. 51
7.1. Stairs, Cripples, & the Elderly ......................................................................................................... 51
7.2. Agriculture .............................................................................................................................................. 52
7.3. Utilities ...................................................................................................................................................... 54
7.4. Room Size & Quality ............................................................................................................................ 55
7.5. D esign Process ....................................................................................................................................... 56
8. U rbanization & Econom ic Ram ifications ............................................................................................ 58
8.1. U rban Layout .......................................................................................................................................... 58
............. 59
.................................................. m
M
.................. - ....
.................................. m
8.2. Stores ........................... m
60
.................
8.3. Social ................................................................................. ....................................................
................................. - .... 62
8.4. Inequality ........................................................................ .............................. mm
................. 65
m
.....
.................... mm
.................... m
9. Politics ............................................................................................ m
...................................................................... 65
9.1. Politicization of the Project ..................... i................. m
9.2. Electoral Im plications ........................................................................................................................ 65
10. Conclusion ........................................................................................................................................................ 69
11. B ibliography .................................................................................................................................................... 73
1.
2.
7
8
1. Introduction
In the past decade, Chinese rural reconstruction policies have increasingly
emphasized the provision of public services and improved housing in rural areas, with
urban-style planning now required at the village level. Meanwhile, aiming to preserve
farmland, the national government has restricted changes in land use, but has allowed
some jurisdictions to reclaim rural houses as farmland in exchange for the right to
construct on farmland at the urban fringe. Combined, these programs have led to the
reconstruction of thousands of villages as more densely populated settlements, relocating
millions of villagers. While still small on a Chinese scale, these projects are becoming more
widespread. Village reconstruction is a relatively new and understudied phenomenon in
rural China. It provides an opportunity to investigate not only interactions between rural
Chinese and their government, but also the impacts of in situ urbanization (jiudi
chengshihua 3kW!IAi{L).
I present a case study of one such relocation project in rural Shandong. At the time
of fieldwork, the project was only partially complete, having encountered financial
difficulties.
My main finding is that architectural and urban design were central to the
outcome of the project Although the government was generous with offers of compensation,
most villagers were nevertheless reluctant to move because of the design of the relocation
housing. When they agreedto move, it was often due to pressurefrom the village government
Moreover, the design of the relocation housing mediated potentially significant changes in
social interaction. And the economic impacts of the project-particularlyon the poor-were
products of housing design.
9
Although few villagers earned most of their income from farming, they were by and
large loathe to move to housing that they perceived as too urban, without the traditional
courtyard and therefore little space for farm animals and tools. The poor and elderly did
not want to move, citing the stairs in the new houses, the added cost of utilities, and the
design's unsuitability for farmers. But attitudes towards the project were by no means
uniform. Some, particularly in the elite, were delighted to have new houses with modern
utilities.
Despite the importance of design to the villagers, much of the government
hierarchy overseeing the project considered design to be of trifling importance.
Given that most villagers did not want to move, offers of compensation proved
insufficient to motivate compliance.
Village leaders and the developer thus assured
participation by pressuring villagers to move. Still, I identified no-one who had been forced
to move without first "voluntarily" signing their name. The legalisms of property rights
were thus guarded while their substance was undermined: villagers largely considered
themselves powerless vis-A-vis the village government, which they feared could punish
recalcitrance.
Hence they complied with village leaders' urgings that they move.
For
similar reasons, they did not consider village elections a suitable way to resolve
disagreements over village policy.
It is difficult to say with certainty how villager attitudes will evolve as the project is
completed and whether villagers will adjust to their new housing; much of the concern may
stem from distrust of government and discomfort with change, although the economic
concerns of lost domestic animals and increased utility bills-again, products of designseemed a real and immediate threat to household self-sufficiency. But much of the longterm impact of projects like this will be social. My preliminary observations on the case
10
village suggest that families may be dividing earlier as a result of the segmented design of
the new housing. Moreover, there appeared to be an increase in social activity on the street
and centered around two new stores.
Yet economically the villagers who had moved had not adjusted much: many clung
to their livestock and resisted using modern utilities. Indeed, the relocation project seemed
to follow a questionable economic logic. The saved construction land quota was valuable
for urban areas. But within the village, the increased farmland that should be created will
be of little economic value relative to earnings from migrant labor. Many of the villagers
spend much of the year in urban areas as migrant workers. While in the long run the new
utilities and housing will probably improve quality of life for some, it is unclear how many
villagers will actually be living at home; those that are in the village are generally elderly or
crippled, and the new homes are not suited to their needs.
11
2. Background on Village Reconstruction Programs
The Chinese government's campaign to Build a New Socialist Countryside (shehui
zhuyi xin nongcunjianshe$
di$$'t)
has brought a raft of new policies aimed at
narrowing persistent rural-urban gaps in income and public services. In little more than a
decade, rural hukou (P HI) bearers have gone from heavily taxed to subsidized; new
healthcare, pension, and minimum livelihood insurance schemes have been set up; and
government at various levels has focused increasingly on improved public goods provision
in rural areas."
Among other things, these new policies have entailed efforts to improve rural utility
provision, expand and enhance the road network, rebuild or refurbish dilapidated houses,
and broaden access to telecommunications. 2 In many villages, this has been implemented
in the form of wholesale village reconstruction, an expensive and controversial
undertaking that seeks not only to provide these public services but also to impose an
urban form on rural China.3 Such reconstruction projects lie at the intersection of rural
rejuvenation policies and land policies, which often provide the motivation and financing
necessary to undertake them.
1 See, e.g., Anna L. Ahlers, Rural Policy Implementation in Contemporary China: New Socialist Countryside,
Routledge Studies on China in Transition 47 (London; New York: Routledge, 2014); Kristen Looney, "The
Rural Developmental State: Modernization Campaigns and Peasant Politics in China, Taiwan and South Korea"
(Harvard University, 2012), http://dash.harvard.edu/handle/1/9807308.
2 See, for example, t A - 4 tj1 2005, 2006 for instructions from the central government
3 Interestingly, similar attempts to provide improved public services by rebuilding whole communes were
proposed, although apparently not implemented, during the Great Leap Forward. The model village of Dazhai,
Shanxi, however, was rebuilt with new housing in the 1960s, and some other villages tried to follow suit. See
Duanfang Lu, Remaking Chinese UrbanForm: Modernity, Scarcity, and Space, 1949-2005, Planning, History, and
Environment Series (London; New York: Routledge, 2005); Jijun Zhao and Jan Woudstra, "'In Agriculture,
Learn from Dazhai': Mao Zedong's Revolutionary Model Village and the Battle against Nature," Landscape
Research 32, no. 2 (April 2007): 171-205, doi:10.1080/01426390701231564; David Zweig, Freeing China's
Farmers:Rural Restructuring in the Reform Era, Socialism and Social Movements (Armonk, NY: M.E. Sharpe,
1997). Lu 101-122; Zhao and Woudstra 184-188; Zweig 137-183, 149.
12
2.1. Rural Planning
As the central government sought to improve rural China, rural life was increasingly
subject to government criticism for its disorderly and unhygienic arrangement. Indeed,
government documents routinely refer to the "dirty, chaotic, and poor village environment"
(nongcun zang, luan, cha de zhuangkuan &ktJ,
AL,
& (J VIA).4
In 2006, the national
Ministry of Construction endorsed village renovation (cunzhuang zhengzhi t'tltie) as a
"core element of the campaign to Build a New Socialist Countryside" in a decidedly
exploratory guidance document, which enthusiastically called for experimentation. 5 A year
later, the national Planning Law was revised to require each village to prepare a long range
plan, which was to include details not only of land use and roads, but also of utilities and
services often new to villages, including running water, sewerage, and garbage collection.
Such plans, moreover, were to protect arable land and separate residences from
livestock-all while abiding by the oft-repeated national policy to "honor local conditions"
(yingdang yindizhiyi A' & BIt 0' A:). Even the traditionally urban concept of functional
zoning, wherein different economic activities are separated spatially, was incorporated. 6
As David Bray observes, this urban-cum-rural planning is a grand project in social
engineering; in his case study, he describes a particular village's plan as a "coordinated and
comprehensive program for urbanizing the village and transforming its residents" guided
"k
W
I
A
,"
March
2012,
http://www.crc.org.cn/Portals//pdf/%E6%96%BO%E5%85%A8%E5%9BBDE5%9C%9FE5%9C%
BO%E6%95%B4%E6%B2%BB%E8%A7%84%E5%88%92%EF%BC%88%E5%BD%BO%E5%88%B7%E7%
A8%BF%EF%BC%89.pdf; Lior Rosenberg, "Urbanising the Rural," China Perspectives, no. 3 (2013): 63-71.
For an extensive discussion, see Rosenberg 64-65.
#
s
f
#
,
2005,
http://www.mohurd.gov.cn/zcfg/jsbwj_0/jsbwjczghyjs/20061 1/t20061101_157348.html.
6 rP$A R -#40W A
*
t, 2007, http://www.gov.cn/flfg/2007-10/28/content_788494.htm; David Bray,
"Urban Planning Goes Rural," China Perspectives, no. 3 (2013): 53-62. Sections 18 and 29 of the law. See Bray
for a far more in depth discussion of the history, purposes, and implementation of village planning.
13
by "highly centralized [...] detailed standards and specifications for design and
construction."7
In these various intentions for such projects are the roots of their many Chinese
names: "village reconstruction" (jiucun gaizao I14ff
"village renovation" (cunzhuang zhengzhi *T1
t$f
),
or cunzhuang gaizao #ti
EMI), the construction of "new village
congregation points" (xincun juju dian i 14 R
(nongcun shequ hua
i
A), and "rural communityization"
tIE), used at times interchangeably and at times to denote
gradations of village reconstruction. 8
2.2. Land Policies
For many of these reconstruction projects, financing and government motivation
come from land policies that tie together urban and rural construction land.
experimental
The
Program to Link Urban and Rural Construction Land (chengxiang
jiansheyongdi zengjian guagou shidian
iQ# R1
i
seeks to facilitate
continued expansion of urban centers by shrinking the rural built-up area. Rural land can
be labeled construction land (jiansheyongdi A*AA) or farming land (gengdi #A),
among other things. Houses, factories, and the like can legally be built only on construction
land, although illegal constructions on farming land are common. The national government,
increasingly concerned about food security, has required that the total quantity of farming
land be preserved and placed annual quotas on the conversion of farmland to construction
7
Bray, "Urban Planning Goes Rural." 54,62.
8 In the case village, the project was often referred to as 1H # i #, although some township and provincial
documents used A#-L 4It . For a discussion of the complexity of the term "rural community," see Looney,
"The Rural Developmental State." 323-329.
14
land.
The Program, still in the experimental (shidian i4r') stage but expanded to 29
provinces in 2013,9 permits villages to relocate to smaller plots of land, thereby minimizing
their use of construction land.
The resulting surplus construction land can then be
converted to farmland, and the increase in farmland can be used to offset an increase in
construction land elsewhere in the same county or district1 0-and
the current boom (some
say bubble) in urban real estate means there is a seemingly insatiable demand for more
urban construction land, as urban expansion requires it. Since rural land is collectively
owned, it is the village that is paid for the transfer of the construction land quota, which
finances the relocation project. So long as urban real estate prices hold up, this Program
permits urban growth while transferring funds from the wealthier urban areas to the rural
countryside."
Such policies, of course, are subject to myriad interpretations. One can see them as
Kristen Looney does: a government land grab,1 2 taking the construction rights of villagers
and shunting them into relocation housing in the process. But such a perspective is too
narrow.
First, these relocation projects are partly rooted in a grandiose scheme to
urbanize ruralites without moving them to the cities. Moreover, the villagers do not lose
land overall, they simply lose construction rights, in exchange for which some of the wealth
generated by urban expansion is transferred to areas far from the cities.
* X If
4 29
f )k 4 )A
A,"
A R
, October 24, 2013,
http://house.people.com.cn/n/2013/1024/c164220-23316056.html.
10 Construction land quota can then be traded between counties; see Cai's discussion of "flying land." Meina
Cai, "Land-Locked Development: The Local Political Economy of Institutional Change in China" (University of
Wisconsin-Madison, 2012).
11 Much appreciation to Yuan Xiao for helping explain this policy to me. Any errors are in my understanding.
12 Looney, "The Rural Developmental State." 274-282.
9 " N I
15
2.3. Prevalence & Prognosis
In considering these village reconstruction projects, it is essential to estimate the
scale of the project. Recent policies provide some insight, if not clarity. The 2014-2020
National Urbanization Plan calls for furthering village renovations (kaizhan cunzhuang
zhengzhi ffK
EVAA), singling out for endorsement the renovation of villages emptied
out by migration (zhengzhi kongxincun
) and the rebuilding of dilapidated
homes (jiben wancheng nongcun weifang gaizao A*'t*'tAf
), urging not only
the improvements in utilities just discussed, but also the provision of urban amenities such
as stores and restaurants. 13 In this sense, policy seeks to urbanize the economics of rural
China (see section 8.4).
By contrast, the new standards for renovating villages put forward by the Ministry
of Housing and Urban-Rural Development at the end of 2013 (predating the Urbanization
Plan) seek to constrict the meaning of "renovation" (zhengzhi lf).
Admonishing planners
to "minimize the destruction of homes and avoid large construction projects or cravings for
things big and foreign" (shao chaifang, bimian da chai dajian he tan da qiu yang '/ *F,
'
the new standards chastise them at length (and in unusual
detail) to include villagers in the planning process.1 4 After clarifying that villagers'
traditional homes are to be respected, the Ministry's policy details the new utilities that are
to be installed and calls for efforts to address wasted land (including that occupied by
"is A fr M :Jit 0
(2014 - 2020 4) ," March 2014, http://news.xinhuanet.com/politics/201403/16/c_119791251.htm. Article 22.
1
)t
&4
1
i
%
All
4
$1
)J
&
,
2013,
http://www.mohurd.gov.cn/zcfg/jsbwj_0/jsbwjczghyjs/201312/t20131226_216680.html.
Section 7.
Sections 8-10.
16
abandoned housing).15 While planners in many parts of China have met these goals by
wholesale village reconstruction and merger, Looney describes a model, adopted in
Ganzhou, Jiangxi, that focuses more on public provision of infrastructure while convincing
villagers to rebuild their own houses.
It is useful to step back even farther in time to mid-2013, when Hill Break Town
(zhen A),16 in which the case village is located, adopted its Master Plan for 2012-2030.
This plan calls for eliminating over forty of the town's seventy-plus administrative villages.
A dozen are to be absorbed by the town seat itself. Of the remainder, many are to be
merged into existing villages, resulting in a total of fifteen (rebuilt) rural communities
E /)
ii)
with about fifteen (rebuilt) satellite villages (shequjumin dian
$
(nongcun shequ A&if
with attention paid so that villagers remain within 30 minutes' walking distance
of their farming land.1 7 Although mergers of administrative villages have been observed
elsewhere,1 8 Hill Break Town is not necessarily representative: it is among two hundred
Shandong towns labeled as demonstration sites (baizhenjianshe shifan xingdong WIfi4
-iN f?Tl J);19 and Shandong, in turn, has been exceptionally zealous in its village
Ibid. Sections 12 and 13.
In the case study area, the hierarchy, from center to grassroots, is as follows: national government,
provincial government, city government, district government, town government, village, and small group or
team.
17 "Hill
Break Town
," 2013. The plan does indeed claim to cover a time period before its adoption.
The case village is itself to be a satellite village.
18 Kan Liu, "Upheaval in Chinese Villages: A Case Study of Rural Land Expropriation for 'Large Scale'
Commercial
Farming in Rural
China, LDPI Working
Paper #18,"
February 2013,
http://www.iss.nl/flleadmin/ASSETS/iss/Research-and-projects/Research-networks/LDPI/LDPIWP_18.pd
f; Jean Oi, "Ways and Consequences of Allocating Village Land Rights" (presented at the "Why We Care About
Land Grabbing in China" Workshop, Harvard Fairbank Center, March 8, 2014); Rosenberg, "Urbanising the
Rural."
19 The program's name notwithstanding, there have been two rounds of one hundred townships each.
1s
16
,43%
17
.4-J1 e=4z=_NAi219W22zkXAWW_
reconstruction movement.20 But the scale of Hill Break Town's plans suggests the potential
immensity of the national village reconstruction movement, and even the relative modesty
of this case study, in which no villages were merged.
Indeed, newspaper reports suggest that Shandong has used 107.3 billion RMB
(USD$17 billion) to construct 1,914 rebuilt villages, with relocation housing for 448,400
households. 21 This monetary figure represents an enormous, concentrated investment in
these villages.
On a per household basis, this comes to a one-time 240,000 RMB
investment-far in excess of annual rural household income. In Shandong, 203,500 mu of
construction land quota was saved and 303,400 mu of land reclaimed according to 2014
figures. Nationally, by early 2012, 1,481,000 mu had been reclaimed as part of the Linking
Program; 22 in 2013 a further 900,000 mu of quota were associated with the Linking
Program.23 Approximating based on these figures, about 4 million rural households have
likely been impacted.
20
21
Rosenberg, "Urbanising the Rural." 69.
J
f V
"
)
2
," )kA H
, May 10, 2014,
http://f.sdnews.com.cn/sdcj/201405/t20140510_1606694.htm.
(2011-2015 4) ," March 16,2011, http://www.tdzyw.com/2012/0704/17747.html.
14Alljh *
22 "4 14.
23"NI*
jp** 29 VfV#i4i
P." These 2013 and 2006 to 2011 or 2012 numbers are not
directly comparable but are the best immediately available.
18
3. Research on Village Reconstruction
3.1. China
Since village reconstruction in China has occurred mostly in the past decade and
only accelerated more recently, literature on village reconstruction is spread thinly across
the various forms such projects take. I include, for the sake of comparison, several articles
discussing rebuilt villages in which the villagers lost their land even while retaining their
village hukou.
David Bray traces policies that promoted increased residential density in villages
from the mid-1990s in Jiangsu, Shanghai, and Zhejiang, showing that they predate the
Building a New Socialist Countryside campaign. Based upon a case study of a Jiangsu
village, he argues that once they were adopted into national policy in the mid-2000s,
standards for village design became strikingly detailed, granting little autonomy to village
planners.24 Lior Rosenberg, studying one county each in Anhui and Shandong provinces,
also finds that state design goals tend to trump villager wellbeing during the
implementation of village reconstruction projects. 25 Meanwhile, Kristen Looney focuses on
the Ganzhou, Jiangxi, model of village reconstruction, where implementation was at least
initially less micromanaged than in Anhui or Shandong: cadres assembled and oversaw
village-level peasant councils which sidestepped village governments to organize families
to rebuild their own houses-albeit according to a menu of blueprints provided by the
state. 26
24
25
26
Bray, "Urban Planning Goes Rural."
Rosenberg, "Urbanising the Rural."
Looney, "The Rural Developmental State."
19
The literature is split on the fundamental question of villager approval. Jean Oi,
whose research appears to span a broad collection of villages, argues that most villagers
(and indeed the national government) do not approve of how village reconstruction and
mergers have been implemented.
She suggests that spelling out on paper who has
property rights (both for land and for collective enterprises) would help avoid much
controversy, and that the level of compensation does not always predict villager approval. 27
She observes that protests seem a more frequent response to village reconstruction in
developed areas-although Rosenberg argues that village reconstruction is more suited to
richer areas and is inappropriate in terms of finances and lifestyle for poorer areas. Joining
Oi in doubting popular support for village reconstruction are Kan Liu and Lynette Ong,
whose works focus on peasants who have lost their farmland. Liu, based on a case study of
an Anhui village, describes villagers who have been forced into financially insecure leisure
by the loss of their fields. 2 8 Ong, working on the outskirts of Hefei, Anhui, similarly
observes that as villagers lose not only their fields but also the productive assets associated
with courtyard homes, their incomes fall. 2 9 Both note the burden of increased utility bills.
This case study focuses on a village where residents kept their agricultural land rights, but
nevertheless largely disliked the village reconstruction project. Property rights did not
play a big role in village discourse. Rather, the architectural and urban design of the new
housing was unpopular with villagers, particularly the poor.
"Ways and Consequences of Allocating Village Land Rights."
Liu, "Upheaval in Chinese Villages: A Case Study of Rural Land Expropriation for 'Large Scale' Commercial
Farming in Rural China, LDPI Working Paper #18."
29 Lynette H. Ong, "State-Led Urbanization in China: Skyscrapers, Land Revenue and 'Concentrated Villages,"'
The China Quarterly 217 (2014): 162-79, doi:10.1017/SO305741014000010.
27
Oi,
28
20
Bray, - Looney, and Rosenberg take a more optimistic view towards village
reconstruction. While each discusses the presence of some opposition, overall they find
support for schemes that provide new housing and better public services.
Meina Cai,
approaching the question from a broader land policy perspective, shows that in Chongqing
and Zhejiang local governments convince villagers to voluntarily give up their rights to
rural construction land by offering generous welfare benefits to participants. 30
3.2. Abroad
China's efforts to rebuild, relocate, and consolidate villages combine two widely
used patterns of development strategy: land readjustment and villagization.
Land
readjustment, particularly popular on the urban fringe, concentrates a plot's original
residents on less land, freeing up the rest for development or to make way for public
services. Villagization, attempted widely in Africa over the past half century, consists of
moving scattered rural households together into often tightly planned, dense village
settlements.
Land readjustment has been widely used in a host of developed countriesGermany, Japan, and the Netherlands to name a few-to sidestep eminent domain
procedures when organizing urban development or furnishing public services.
In
urbanizing areas, land readjustment allows landowners to relocate to new houses taking
up less land but in the same area, thereby making way for increased density and ideally
allowing residents to capture some of the land value increment for themselves. In these
cases and even in rural land readjustment, practiced routinely in the Netherlands,
30
Cai, "Land-Locked Development: The Local Political Economy of Institutional Change in China."
21
government can use space freed up by land readjustment to construct roads and install
utilities; sometimes additional land is transferred to government to finance such services. 31
The Chinese model embodied in village reconstruction and the Program to Link
Urban and Rural Construction Land readjusts rural households to free up construction land
quota-not so much land itself-for use in urbanization.
The funds generated from
urbanization not only finance the readjustment but also the provision of public services to
the rural area. While the policy is one of land readjustment, the Chinese model differs
sharply from those in other countries. Land readjustment is, Hong argues, often a response
to strong property rights, as the state seeks to accomplish planning goals through the
cooperation of strong landowners when it lacks the wherewithal to simply expropriate
land. 32 Yet even in such strong property rights regimes as Japan, land readjustment can
involve coercion by local officials or other landowners 33-although
perhaps more modest
than what I observe in this case study. In theory, and as described by local officials, Chinese
village reconstruction is land readjustment done by the book: the project is arranged by
consensus among its participants, and laws limit the ability of holdouts to impede the
project.34 The reality can be far less participatory.
Dutch rural land readjustment in many ways resembles Chinese rural land reallocation, seeking a more
efficient allotment of agricultural fields. See Barrie Needham, "The Search for Greater Efficiency: Land
Readjustment in The Netherlands," in Analyzing Land Readjustment: Economics, Law, and Collective Action, ed.
Yu-hung Hong and Barrie Needham (Cambridge, Mass: Lincoln Institute of Land Policy, 2007), 115-33.
32
Yu-hung Hong, "Assembling Land for Urban Development," in Analyzing Land Readjustment: Economics,
Law, and CollectiveAction, ed. Yu-hung Hong and Barrie Needham (Cambridge, Mass: Lincoln Institute of Land
Policy, 2007), 3-33. 15.
33
Andre Sorensen, "Consensus, Persuasion, and Opposition: Organizing Land Readjustment in Japan," in
Analyzing Land Readjustment: Economics, Law, and Collective Action, ed. Yu-hung Hong and Barrie Needham
(Cambridge, Mass: Lincoln Institute of Land Policy, 2007), 89-114; Yu-hung Hong, "Law, Reciprocity, and
Economic Incentives," in Analyzing Land Readjustment: Economics, Law, and Collective Action, ed. Yu-hung
Hong and Barrie Needham (Cambridge, Mass: Lincoln Institute of Land Policy, 2007), 183-94. Hong 190.
34
Hong, "Assembling Land for Urban Development" 18-20.
31
22
Land readjustment is, in Chinese village reconstruction, similar to villagization.
Village reconstruction in some parts of China resembles villagization more fully than in
others. In interior areas, such as Sichuan and Chongqing, where villagers can be spread
widely across the landscape, village reconstruction is indeed villagization; in areas, such as
in the present case study, with more densely populated villages to begin with, village
reconstruction merely shares important characteristics with villagization.
First and foremost, villagization is almost always undertaken with a developmental
aim, often with government commitments to provide better services to the more accessible,
denser village. 35
This developmental purpose does not always pan out.
Government
promises of improved services are often not delivered, 36 and particularly in 1970s
Tanzania and 1980s Ethiopia, agriculture has suffered and shortages ensued when villagers
find themselves far from their old fields or relocated to areas unsuitable for their
traditional farming methods. 37
Much of this, however, is rooted in the poverty of the peasants relocated and the
weakness of the states relocating them. Indeed, it is somewhat amazing that villagization
was accomplished at all in some of these countries, let alone for millions of peasants at
35
There have of course been other motivations.
Whittaker discusses 1960s villagization as an anti-
insurgency method in Kenya, and-with far more relevance to China (see Liu and Ong)-Davison reports on
current villagization in Ethiopia that clears land for commercial agriculture. But in both these cases as well,
the ability to provide better services to denser village settlements is a government sales point. Hannah
Whittaker, "Forced Villagization during the Shifta Conflict in Kenya, Ca. 1963-1968," InternationalJournal of
African HistoricalStudies 45, no. 3 (October 2012): 343-64; William Davison, "In Ethiopia, a Plan Known as
'Villagization' Has Freed up Vast Tracts for Foreign Corporations," ChristianScience Monitor, June 10, 2013, 18.
36 James C. Scott, Seeing like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed, Yale
Agrarian Studies (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1998); Whittaker, "Forced Villagization during the Shifta
Conflict in Kenya, Ca. 1963-1968." Scott 247-252, Whittaker 355
37 Elizabeth Daley, "Land and Social Change in a Tanzanian Village 1: Kinyanambo, 1920s-1990," Journalof
Agrarian Change 5, no. 3 (July 2005): 363-404, doi:10.1111/j.1471-0366.2005.00105.x; Graham Thiele, "The
Tanzanian Villagisation Programme: Its Impract on Household Production in Dodoma," CanadianJournal of
African Studies / Revue Canadienne Des ktudes Africaines 20, no. 2 (January 1, 1986): 243-58,
doi:10.2307/484872; Scott, Seeing like a State. Daley 388-389, Thiele 243-244, 249, Scott 247-252
23
breakneck pace. 38
But much was accomplished scrappily: Daley describes Tanzanian
peasants told to build their own houses after their old ones were burnt down-an effective
way to force relocation; in her case village, the village plan was developed after the
resettlement process. 3 9 (Yet after villagization a new school and several stores were
opened.) These African attempts at villagization differ markedly from the Chinese program
in scale-at least relative to their respective national populations-and in the resources
the state can offer; while some African programs, such as in Rwanda and Zimbabwe, sought
to improve land use efficiency, it tended not to be a foundational purpose. 40 Perhaps most
importantly, many Chinese peasants are wealthy-and China's countryside is developedby comparison to their villagized African counterparts.
Yet in the implementation of African villagization schemes, particularly in Tanzania,
there are clear parallels with the Chinese case. Village siting and design were often not
thoughtful-they were frequently done on the fly with an eye towards standardization and
ease of governance. 41 Indeed, William Munro and James Scott argue that a secondary
purpose of Zimbabwean and Tanzanian villagization, respectively, was the extension of
state power into the countryside, and that planned villages were not only easier for the
state to govern but simpler for it to comprehend-a point also fundamental to the
38
At least 5 million were moved in Tanzania (Scott 223) and 4.6 million in Ethiopia (Scott 248); in Rwanda
about 2 million were villagized in the late 1990s (Isaksson 399). Villagers were sometimes moved in a mere
day; planning could be done in hours (Scott 234). Scott, Seeing like a State; Ann-Sofie Isaksson, "Manipulating
the Rural Landscape: Villagisation and Income Generation in Rwanda," JournalofAfrican Economies 22, no. 3
(June 1, 2013): 394-436, doi:10.1093/jae/ejsO38.
39 Daley, "Land and Social Change in a Tanzanian Village 1." Daley 383-385.
40 Indeed, Tanzanian village houses were sometimes set 30 meters apart from one another, a far more
spacious arrangement than prevails in much of rural China at present. Isaksson, "Manipulating the Rural
Landscape." 395.
41 Thiele, "The Tanzanian Villagisation Programme"; Scott, Seeing like a State. Thiele 253, Scott 235, 238, etc.
24
provision of services. 42 Scott extends this argument, suggesting that the government
sought simultaneously to negate traditional practices and to satisfy an aesthetic that
emphasized order and neglected usefulness. While the Chinese case study presented here
has been far more deferential to local conditions than the frenzied Tanzanian villagization,
it has similarly critiqued traditional village design and campaigned to replace it with a
more ordered, clean, and simple arrangement.
William A. Munro, "Building the Post-Colonial State: Villagization and Resource Management in Zimbabwe,"
Politics& Society 23, no. 1 (March 1, 1995): 107-40, doi:10.1177/0032329295023001005; Scott, Seeing like a
State. Munro 108, Scott 224
42
25
4. Background on Old Spring Village
4.1. Methods
This case study is based upon eleven days of interviews with over fifty villagers in
January 2014 in a Shandong village, which I label Old Spring Village. The village was
chosen by a local government official, although my initial project was unrelated to village
reconstruction. Interviews were conducted by the author with a fellow researcher and, in
many cases, with a student translator. Most interviews were with villagers, although I
spoke several times with various village leaders, the developer stationed in the village, and
town officials. After leaving the village, I interviewed a district planning official and one of
the architects in the group that designed the relocation homes. In selecting villagers to
interview, we sought a relatively balanced geographic and demographic sample but did not
follow a systematic procedure.
4.2. Geography
Old Spring Village of Hill Break Town is located in a mountainous, rural portion of a
peripheral district (qu K) of a Shandong city. Its ten natural villages (ziran cun 0A~f)4
form five or six clusters falling along a three kilometer stretch of valley, divided down the
middle by a small stream. Paved roads encircle the east-west valley, although most traffic
traverses the northern road. The north road from the town transits another administrative
village on its seven kilometer route to Old Spring Village; just past Old Spring Village's
boundary lies a popular tourist site wrapped in protected forest land.
43
Rlft
_ IE," 2012. The number of natural villages (communities beneath
"Old Spring Village
the level of an administrative village) proved a remarkably difficult question, with villagers' answers often
varying and official paperwork inconsistent There may be fewer than ten natural villages.
26
4.3. Economy
The tourist site underpins much of the economic success of the northern natural
villages. Old Spring Village has over twenty restaurants (nongjiale
) although it
appears that supply far outpaces demand, particularly in the wake of recent campaigns
against the dining habits of officials; indeed, several restaurateurs close their restaurants
during the off season and seek employment as migrant laborers. Nevertheless, proximity
to a tourist site provides both entrepreneurial opportunities and a source of (often lowwage) employment.
The tourist site has also spurred dreams of commercial housing development.
Several years ago, a developer from another Shandong city rented several mu (0) of
farmland from natural villages north of the river to build housing. It remains only partially
built and vacant, as he failed to secure the necessary construction permits. The Village
Head has more recently begun construction on about a dozen luxury villas overlooking the
village, although these are not yet occupied either. Indeed, despite the enthusiasm for
constructing commercial housing, the village seems to have, as yet, no completed successful
projects.
The attempts to build commercial housing have, however, impacted agriculture.
The village has historically grown corn and wheat along relatively flat fields in the valley
and steeply terraced ones climbing the mountains to the south. More recently, villagers
have begun growing walnuts, a lucrative crop once trees have matured. A small walnut
cooperative is in operation, as is a much larger wild herb and chrysanthemum tea
cooperative, organized by a successful seafood merchant who mainly resides in the district
seat. The attempted housing developments have seized agricultural land held by several of
27
the northern natural villages in the valley; most affected villagers reported receiving
annual rent pegged to the price of grain as compensation." Those still farming grain on the
village's remaining 35 hectares 45 often expressed disgruntlement: their grain farming
barely breaks even financially, and given their often limited land holdings, it primarily
serves to feed themselves. 46 Most villagers partook of limited animal husbandry, raising a
clutch of chickens in their courtyard; some also raised anywhere from several to a hundred
head of goats.
For most younger and middle-aged villagers, however, the primary source of income
was from migrant labor. Most worked as cooks or construction workers in the city, earning
twenty to thirty thousand RMB a year and returning home for several months a year to
farm and relax. Others worked in the more successful restaurants or at construction sites
within or abutting the village. The elderly relied on a combination of animal husbandry,
farming, remittances, and rural pensions, which left some in poverty.
4.4. Demography
As many of its 750 legal residents
47
spend much of their time working in urban
areas, Old Spring Village's actual resident population is-typical of rural Chinapredominantly elderly. The grandparents care for the youngest children in the village,
although starting in kindergarten they commute to the town seat. Come middle and high
school, many reside in the town's boarding school or, through tests or bribes, enroll at the
44 They
often complained about their loss of land, partly because it was lying unused and partly because of the
(small) grain subsidy that they would have received had they been able to farm. It appears that there had
been few, if any, takings of construction land in the recent past, although some houses had been moved in the
early 2000s for construction of the southern road through the village.
4S "Old Spring Village I
Th 4 A 4 *."
46 Those with walnut and other trees could earn substantial income, in some cases much as 8000 RMB a year.
47
"Old Spring Village I
IjE";
_T f"Old Spring Village I H i#t ," 2010.
28
school in the district seat. Among the few young villagers home for vacation, there was a
desire to move out of the village when possible.48 The village still does have a respectable
middle-aged population thanks to tourism entrepreneurship and employment, and their
numbers are further bolstered at the Chinese New Year (when I conducted this research)
and during the farming season by return migrants.
4.5. Intra-Village Migration
Due to wide variation in the accessibility and resources of the natural villages,
residents of the southernmost natural villages had begun migrating to areas around the
north road even prior to the village reconstruction project. The north road is the center of
the village's economic activity-restaurants and a handful of general stores are located
there.
The south road was built in the early 2000s, so migrants before that time moved
north in part for better accessibility. Moreover, two of the southernmost natural villages
are generally more run-down and have less access to water than their northern
counterparts. 49 The result has been increasing population in the north of Old Spring Village,
where children often move as families divide. Even households already settled in the south
have relocated, leaving a significant number of abandoned houses:50 in one of the southern
natural villages, one quarter of the homes was abandoned and a further quarter padlocked.
48 Interviews #103, 106
Interviews #65,114, etc.; "Old Spring Village
.
49
50 See e.g., Interviews #104, 105
29
5. Project Plan
5.1. Overarching Plan
The village reconstruction project seeks to complete this initially voluntary
migration and incorporate several other natural villages as well. A total of five natural
villages, mostly located between the north and south roads, are to be moved onto the site of
a sixth, which has already been partially destroyed. The September 2010 plan calls for 27
complemented by a kindergarten, a service center (shequ fuwu zhongxin *IMM~)
and old age apartments (laonian gongyu
)
rows of eight townhomes each of relocation housing (anzhifang 9' W N ), to be
So far, only four rows, for a total of
32 townhomes, have been completed.
The project was to be funded upfront by a developer, who after building the
relocation houses and demolishing the village's old housing stock, was to receive a hefty
subsidy from the village and the right to develop commercial housing on the site of one of
the southern natural villages.5 2 A modicum of construction land would be conserved for
the next decade's forecast population growth, estimated at 5% per year. The remaining 80
mu of construction land allocation5 3 would be sold on the land quota platform (pingtai 1
r), the revenue from which would precisely constitute the village's subsidy to the
developer.s4 Yet even these broad outlines were the subject of much contradictory
information among interviewees.
51 "Old Spring
Village I1f
Interviews #40,64
53
"Old Spring Village I
54
1nterview #99
JVAff
19 0 1* it#k"
52
B
II."
30
5.2. Planning Process
The planning process began when higher levels of government suggested the
project, and the Village Head (cunzhang #'-K-) decided to make it his own: trekking, he
emphasized, from one government office to the next to apply, starting at the town level and
working his way up to the city.5 5 The literature suggests that who initiates reconstruction
projects may vary substantially across villages. Ahlers, whose work covers the broadest
geographic areas but focuses on county officials, argued that, while some projects
percolated up from the villages and others came from village leaders or higher-level
officials, village public involvement mostly served to legitimate projects and avoid
unpopular ones.5 6 While Bray points to a web of national laws directing rural planning, he
found a remarkably bottom-up process, in which village officials prepared their plan and
villagers were involved; he seems to have conducted extensive discussions with village
leadership.57 Both Rosenberg and Liu, whose research was primarily conducted at higher
levels of government (township and county), 5 found relatively centralized planning
shaping grassroots projects.5 9 Looney, whose research spanned from city officials to
villagers, describes a Ganzhou (Jiangxi) model of village renovations that, at least at the
outset, emphasized villager involvement through newly created peasant councils, albeit
ss Interviews #48,85
56
Ahlers, Rural Policy Implementation in ContemporaryChina. 132-134.
Bray, "Urban Planning Goes Rural." 60.
58 Rural Chinese government hierarchy, as noted earlier, runs from center down as follows: national
57
government, provincial government, prefectural government, county government, township government,
village government.
s9 Rosenberg, "Urbanising the Rural"; Liu, "Upheaval in Chinese Villages: A Case Study of Rural Land
Expropriation for 'Large Scale' Commercial Farming in Rural China, LDPI Working Paper #18." Rosenberg 70,
Liu 9, etc.
31
heavily guided by higher-level cadres.60 Speaking mostly to villagers, I found significant
village leadership involvement and minimal involvement by other villagers.
Decision making within the village was the subject of a great deal of obfuscation by
the leaders, who sought to make it sound far more democratic than it was. The former
village Party Secretary and former Village Head insisted that an exhaustive sequence of
meetings were held during 2010 and 2011.61 The current Village Head (in office at the time
of planning) reported that during summer 2011 the village had approved the plan, first
through the twin village and Party committees (liangweihui M44), then by a meeting of
the village representatives (cunmin daibiao dahui t't{
tk)
at which participants
signed their names. 62 But I was unable to access the (supposedly public) record of this
meeting of village representatives. And, although a representative meeting is expected to
include a representative of most households, households without representation on the
liangweihuiall said they had not been to any such meeting.63
The village leaders, however, did go from house to house to request signatures from
residents confirming their approval of the plan.64 Unprompted, a higher government
official observed that this legally satisfied the requirement for a village representative
meeting, given the supposed difficulties of collecting representatives in a village with many
migrants-although it definitely did not qualitatively fit his description of a consultative
process. The Village Head claimed to have amassed 90% approval at that stage, with the
6
0
Looney, "The Rural Developmental State."
Interview #40
62 Interviews #48,85
63 Interviews #50, 52, 57, 63, 68, 70, 71, 78, etc.
64
1nterviews #57
61
32
remaining 10% eventually coming on board.65 Yet several villagers remarked that they had
known nothing of the project until construction started or the developer visited their
home. 66 Clearly, while the village leaders intended to maintain firm control over decisionmaking, describing democratic process (but not substantive democratic give-and-take) was
important to them.
This fits with Ahlers' findings in her study of county-level
implementation of the campaign to Build a New Socialist Countryside.
Although a
foundational tenet of the campaign, democratic process was the least fleshed out in
implementation guidelines. Hence it was often limited to slogans or, in the better cases,
used to smooth policy implementation. 67
5.3. Financing and Subsidies
Many of the project's biggest problems stemmed from inadequate financing. Old
Spring Village refused either to charge villagers for their new homes or to contribute any
funds of its own, save for transferring the price of the construction land allocation sales to
the developer.
This left the project underfunded, so the village decided to give the
developer one of the natural villages' construction land for a commercial development.
Still, the project was underfunded.
One early developer faced such financial
difficulties that by spring 2012 the town government stepped in to assist him in raising
funds.68 He nevertheless failed, construction ground to a halt, and by August 2013 his
rights had been sold to a new developer for 15 to 16 million RMB. 69 Whereas the preceding
developer appears to have been from the area, the current one emphasized his firm's
65
Interyvjew #48
66
67
Interviews #50, 52, 63, etc.
68
"Old Spring Village it
Interview #100
69
Ahlers, Rural Policy Implementation in ContemporaryChina. 147.
33
ability to advance funds for the project (dianfu nengli MV14Jit), thanks to prior successful
investments in urban areas.70 Indeed, today's developer was the only one that bid for the
project, which he attributed to its high cost and the risk averseness of his competitors.
Today's developer expects hefty 20% profits in return for relatively high investment: by
May 2012 investment in the relocation houses alone had topped 14 million RMB, and
today's developer forecasts a total investment (including for commercial housing) of 100
million RMB, plus another 300-400 million RMB for far-fetched plans to add a hotel and
restaurant 7
The village's (future) earnings from the sale of the construction land rights proved
remarkably hard to pin down. Perhaps one village leader put it best when he remarked
that the sum that would finally arrive-which was not due until after project completionwas unpredictable: some earnings would have been skimmed off by every level of
government. 72 The district planning office (qu guihuaju KMA10J3 ) estimated that the
village would earn 300,000 RMB for each of the 80 mu of construction land allocation it
would sell, figuring this 24 million RMB inadequate to fund the project.73 The Village
Head's estimates varied, starting at 6 million RMB 74 and rising to 50 million RMB (with 200
mu of saved land!). 75 A town document recorded the village's investment as of 2012 at 3
million RMB, 76 but the current developer (who had arrived only in 2013), said he had
70
Interview #64
71 Interview #64
Interview #40
Interview #118
74
Interview #48
72
73
Interview #85. The Village Head also mentioned 300 mu of saved land in another interview. Interview #48.
Neither number is plausible when compared with Google Earth satellite images.
76 "Old Spring Village it I
I
."
75
34
received no government subsidy but planned to raise the subject when the relocation
housing was complete. 77
5.4. Natural Villages
Another point on which confusion reigned was which natural villages were
participating in the program. Those natural villages closest to the tourist site had been
protected from demolition by higher levels of government, apparently to preserve their
allegedly scenic appearance. 78 By the Village Head's account, all other natural villages were
to move; this largerly agreed with the town project report. 79 Yet the developer stated two
of the larger, northern natural villages were not to move,8 0 and their residents in some
cases seemed to agree, contending that they had successfully refused relocation. 81 The only
portion of a natural village for which moving was completely beyond doubt was that on
already cleared land.
Given the confusion about who was eligible to move, it is unsurprising that there
was, as well, some confusion about how many people were moving. It seems most likely
that-assuming all six "eligible" natural villages ultimately moved-somewhere between
100 and 175 households would relocate.8 2 Some of these households, however, refused to
move (see section 6.4).
77
Interview #64
Interviews #76,85
79
Interview #85, "Old Spring Village I4*A#0*
_ f iE."
80 Interview #100
81 Interviews #72, 38
82
"Old Spring Village I
4
-9 _T
JEZ."
f Interviews #40, 85.
78
35
5.5. Construction Land
As already described, the village reconstruction project was financially underpinned
by the value of construction land-both as a tangible good that could be transferred to the
developer and as a right that could be sold externally. The developer was to clear and
reclaim for agriculture the land for which the construction rights were to be sold.8 3 The
Village Head explained that this land would be divided up evenly among the residents, 84
while some other members of the leadership expected it to go to those whose houses had
been on the plot.85 One team leader 86 said the issue would be sorted out when there was
land to divide.87 Villagers, however, were often deeply cynical: some figured that all the
land would go to the developers, the village as an entity, or a corporate farmer.88
There was certainty among both villagers and their leaders that (at least) one
natural village's construction land-that least suitable for agriculture-had been assigned
to the developer for commercial real estate.
5.6. Commercial Development Plans
The developer's plans were, however, on hold. His office in the village was dwarfed
by the scale model that occupied the foyer. While saying that construction was due to start
in 2014, he clarified that the plans were out of date and invalid, which left us befuddled
until a district-level planner explained that the plans had been rejected: the proposed villas
and hotel looked too much like villas and a hotel, and were not in keeping with the
83 Interviews #48,99
84
Interview #48
85 Interview #40
86 A team or small group leader (xiaozu /1,
) is the leader of what was formerly the production team
AR), which often corresponds to the boundaries of natural villages. The team leader
(shengchan dui
serves as an intermediary between village leadership and villagers.
87 Interview #62
88 Interviews #63, 65, 72
36
atmosphere of a village.8 9 This seemed a significant hurdle, but no one in the village
mentioned it.
&
The developer did outline his plans. He hoped to build a holiday village (dujiacun
{@t), with 60
villas (bieshu iJR) that he expected the wealthy to purchase and convert to
resort homes (gerenhuisuo
A
Confident that they would be able to pitch the
village's location-both relative to the tourist site and more broadly-and its quiet
atmosphere, he planned to forgo formal advertising and depend on word of mouth. The
purchasers would not be able, however, to change their hukou and legally move to the
village. 90 He expected to sell the villas for 4,000 RMB per square meter, and to make
further money by selling 4,000 square meters of excess relocation housing.91
5.7. Relocation Homes
The plans for the relocation homes were decidedly more modest than the plans for
the commercial development. In 2010, architects from the district seat had been brought
in with instructions to design relatively uniform housing on a plot of land chosen by the
village.92 They designed a neighborhood of nearly identical south-facing, three- to fourstory townhomes in 27 blocks of eight units each, totaling about 30,000 square meters. At
the center of the new neighborhood would be a kindergarten, old-age home, government
service center, and plaza.93 Somehow, the old, worn blueprints that the newly arrived
developer gave us showed only a portion of these plans, excluding several of the housing
89
Interview #118
#48
Interview #64
90 Interview
91
92
Interview #119. Interestingly, the village claimed the better north-side land for itself, ensuring year-round
sunlight, while the developer was given land on the south (north-facing) side of the valley.
93"Old Spring Village 1H #
_W & A
tA
."
37
blocks and all of the village services. 94 He expected to build 15 buildings. 95 The details of
the design are discussed more in section 8.1.
Construction began in 2011.96
As of January 2014, four buildings had been
completed and were mostly occupied; a further seven were at various stages of
construction, although no work had been done for over a year (see section 5.3).97 The
developer expected to restart construction after the 2014 Chinese New Year, with
completion sometime in 2014.98
94
1nterview #100. Neither the Village Head nor the town had copies of the plans, the former referring us to
the developer and the latter referring us to the Village Head. The developer-who presumably would need
the blueprints when it came time to tell the construction contractors he hires what to do-initially gave us
significantly different old blueprints dating to 2009, before the village had decided to build the project.
Interviews #64, 85, 99
95 Interview #64.
96
"Old Spring Village I t4 A4 0
Interview #112
98 Interview
#64
1P
97
38
6. Relocation and Compensation
6.1. Villager Motivations
Most villagers9 9 I interviewed did not want to move, mainly for reasons closely
related to their personal physical wellbeing or aspects of the relocation housing itself. I
treat both these concerns in section 7, and focus here on motivations not directly related to
the design of the new settlement It is worth emphasizing that, since the project was still in
progress, views were neither unsullied by the actual housing product itself-as they might
have been before the project began-nor completely reflective-as they might be after it is
completed. Rather, they incorporate the nervousness and excitement that can come with a
prospective change of home and lifestyle. And, as Minzi Su discusses in introducing her
fieldwork, there is a tendency among Chinese villagers to express a sense of victimhood for
the Chinese peasantry collectively, sometimes even in hopes of extracting compensation. 100
For quite a few villagers, the government's request that they move was adequate
motivation: with or without expressing reservations about relocating, they would remark
that they would follow the will of the village leadership.1 01
For some in village
government-notably not the Village Head and Party Secretary, whose villas were in
natural villages not affected by the relocation project-there was a sense of obligation to
set an example by moving. For at least one, who had just built his family a new home, this
was a difficult decision; he also did not seem dedicated to relocating others.1 02 For two
others, the decision was not so hard: they actually were businessmen in the district seat, so
99 About two-thirds of the villagers in a broad but not necessarily representative sample.
100 Minzi Su, China's Rural Development Policy: Exploring the "New Socialist Countryside" (Boulder, Colo:
FirstForumPress, 2009). xii.
101 Interviews #87, 112, etc.
102
Interview #53
39
it was in fact their (not always eager) families they were moving, in one case into a
gorgeously remodeled pair of townhomes. 103
For those most enthusiastic about moving, the prospect of a new, more modern
house was a draw. Another motivation for moving was the spread out (fensan 3M() nature
of the village. Just as this had motivated the leadership and the planners to propose the
village reconstruction plan, it motivated villagers who felt they would benefit from the
improved transportation access and proximity to neighbors. 104 Similarly, as neighbors
agreed to move, villagers felt that the critical mass necessary to sustain a natural village
was lost, and grudgingly agreed to join the exodus. 105
Beyond dissatisfaction with the new houses' design, perhaps the biggest
impediment to moving was the financial and emotional investment villagers had made in
their current housing. Seeking more space than had been available in their often one-room
mud brick houses, many villagers had built relatively large, multi-room concrete and brick
houses in the past decade, some after the village reconstruction project was decided. 106 For
them, the significant sunk costs associated with a new house-several hundred thousand
RMB-made moving unappealing, particularly since reimbursement was not tied to the age
or valuation of one's house. 107 Furthermore, most villagers with new houses had designed
Interviews #65,96
Interviews #87, 105, 112, etc.
105 Interviews #51, etc.
106Two villagers said that getting a building permit had become significantly more bureaucratic-one now
had to obtain permission from the city-level government-and that the village was anyways threatening to
destroy new construction, even if permitted. Interviews #103, 107.
107 Interviews #52, 71, 72, 73, 88, 106
103
104
40
them personally and many had played a role in building them; they felt their design far
superior, and seemed to have a strong personal connection to their homes. 108
This is not to say that those in old houses necessarily wanted to move, although
their counterparts in newer houses often thought they did or ought to.109 Residents of
older houses were generally poorer and more likely to cite increased utility costs as a
disincentive to move (see section 7.3). For the many elderly and crippled villagers, the
prospect of physically moving, let alone to a house with stairs, was unappealing (see
section 7.1).110
There were, of course, financial incentives to move as well (and hence financial
thresholds for moving) (see section 6.3).
6.2. Methods to Extract Signatures & Retribution
If it's suitable,you must move; ifit's not suitable,you still must move. - Villager
In a very tangible and yet very technical sense, the decision to move was voluntary,
and was indeed the villager's. The village studiously collected signatures before relocating
households, and even the most distraught household did not allege that it had not signed to
move.1 12 Yet it was clear that many of the signatures were not freely given.
108 Interviews #50, 56, 112
109
Interviews #71, etc.
110 Interviews #49, 61, etc.
111 Interview #65
1 12
A small group leader and the developer did emphasize, however, that once 80% of villagers signed, the last
20% of villagers could be forced to move. Interviews #62, 64. New Shandong government guidelines specify
that 95% of impacted villager must assent before a project can proceed. ib t
#* W:4*AOJ AA
7 HA
%1,,
2014, http://sdgb.shandong.gov.cn/art/2014/5/16/art_4563_2496.html.
41
The village required a battery of signatures from each household.
First came
signatures to support the project (see section 5.2). Then came signatures to confirm the
village's valuation of the household (primarily its area) and associated assets, such as trees.
Finally, the household was asked to sign a contract for moving, a copy of which it seems
was generally left with the household. It seemed that households could sign the first two
documents and still not be required to move.1 13
The developer arranged a duet with the village leadership to procure signatures.
First the liangweihui or village committee (cunweihui t'tk)
homes to seek their approval.
114
would visit villagers'
Then the developer would visit and ask the head of
household to sign a contract One elderly woman emphasized that she was pursued for her
signature, and that an "outsider" (waidi 4t) developer came and "forced" (qiangpo N
LO)115
her household to sign.116 Even in this case, money played a role, and the developer
remarked that when villagers refused to sign, it was "a money question" (qian de wenti 1R
0J fil). However, he "avoids giving too much, and first sends the village to work on the
matter" (buhuigel tamen taiduo, rang cunfixian zuogongzuo &
TEf).1
Th4i3-k'$, ikt't9B{i
7
The "work" the village set about doing was widely referred to as sixiang gongzuo ()
tIi{),
113
which approximately means pressure work but is literally ideological work. At its
Interviews #112, etc.
Some villagers reported their small group leader (xiaozuzhang 4-1 -K) visiting instead. Many simply
referred to the brigade (dadui -kA), as the village is tellingly, but anachronistically, still known.
115 It is important to note that here "force" did not, so far as I know, involve any violence.
114
116
Interview #56
117
Interview #64
42
best, the ideological work consisted of endorsements of the superior quality of the
relocation housing.11 8 In some cases, this seems to have been reasonably successful,
convincing villagers that moving was indeed a good idea-although some have since come
to view the new houses as decidedly inferior.11 9 The deputy Village Head estimated that
about 80% of villagers agreed to move initially.1 20 Concurrent with the ideological work
was the discussion of financial compensation (see next section).
But the ideological work also entailed thinly veiled threats.
The Village Head
explained that the village committee begins by remarking that relocating to more dense
settlements is a national trend. Then the village committee discusses utilities: if a villager
does not move and becomes geographically isolated, his water and electric costs will rise; if
he moves, he will have access to gas and solar power.121 At least one household heard
instead that its electricity would be turned off if it did not move, a tactic that has been used
in at least one other village in the same district and that Liu observed in her case study.1 22
And in the more remote southernmost natural village, it had been made clear that the
mechanized well would not be maintained, forcing those who wanted water to relocate.1 23
But threats about utilities were clearly not the most frightening aspect of a village
government request. Villagers rely on the village government for a great many things,
particularly land for household division and practical permission to rebuild their houses;
118 One villager, who happened to work for the town hospital, said the village had not even bothered with this
step, simply presenting the plans and leaving the choice of moving entirely up to him. He chose not to move.
Interview #110.
119
120
Interviews #74, 93, 106
Interview #96
Interview #85
Interview #90. Liu, "Upheaval in Chinese Villages: A Case Study of Rural Land Expropriation for 'Large
Scale' Commercial Farming in Rural China, LDPI Working Paper #18." 14.
123 Interview #114
121
122
43
hence staying put would likely mean indefinite stasis in terms of housing. 124 The village
leadership also can muster other forms of retribution, since, as one villager put it, there will
come a day when one needs their assistance.125 Thus the general attitude among manyalthough not all-was that they had little choice but to comply with the will of the
leadership.
The various ways in which the village government used its power to "encourage"
relocation raises questions about property rights in rural China. That Old Spring Village let
the project rest upon the signatures of each household suggests an immense respect for the
paperwork of property rights-or at least pressure from the bureaucracy. Indeed, there
are simpler and more efficient ways to force relocation. Yet a property rights regime with
real substance requires, essentially, that the government exercise self-restraint;
126
although most functional governments could arrange to cut off utilities to a troublesome
household, doing so exerts disproportionate leverage in negotiations. On the other hand,
property rights amount to little if their bearers choose not to exercise them. In this sense,
responsibility falls with the villagers who, seeing that the village government supported
relocation, immediately conceded that they would have to move; likewise, holdouts could
face social pressure from neighbors who contended that refusing to move was hopeless. 127
Ahlers, indeed, finds that village leaders use the social pressure of the village community to
Interviews #68, 103
Interview #93
126 See, e.g., Lee J. Alston, Thrainn Eggertsson, and Douglass C. North, eds., EmpiricalStudies in Institutional
Change, Political Economy of Institutions and Decisions (Cambridge; New York: Cambridge University Press,
1996). 131-134.
127 Interview #56.
Liu finds similar group mentality in her study of large-scale farms' land rentals. Liu,
"Upheaval in Chinese Villages: A Case Study of Rural Land Expropriation for 'Large Scale' Commercial
Farming in Rural China, LDPI Working Paper #18."
124
125
44
bring reluctant households into line.128 In this sense, as Yiqiang Liu suggests in the context
of China, and as economists have acknowledged more broadly, property rights, no matter
how well protected, only exist if local culture incorporates them.1 29 In short, it seems the
bureaucracy of property rights has made it to Old Spring Village, but the ideology of
property rights has not. Hence the planned reforms to allow villagers to transfer their
holdings in rural construction land would have probably had negligible impact; indeed, no
one seemed to doubt that the villagers had the property rights to their houses.1 30
Another question raised by the village leadership's use of utilities to threaten
villagers is the legitimate role of the administrative village as a protector of collective
interests. If the village government can offer, for free, new housing to all its residents, and
thereby minimize the cost of various public services while providing additional public
services in the new area, does it have an obligation to maintain a well in a sparsely
populated natural village if some villagers elect not to relocate? If the village government
does not have such an obligation, what then becomes of the property rights of that natural
village's households? Indeed, according to the architectural plans, the poor state of the
water supply and electric grid was in the first place a major motivation for the relocation
project.131
28
1
Ahlers, Rural Policy Implementation in ContemporaryChina. 138.
129 Armen Albert Aichian, Economic Forces at Work (Indianapolis: Liberty Press, 1977); Alston, Eggertsson,
and North, EmpiricalStudies in InstitutionalChange. Alchian 129-130; Alston et al. 7-8.
f
11/15/c_118164235.htm. Item 11.
131 "Old Spring Village I #.
4 e 3 ) t 4 I 4t t k130
MJ XJ *-i, 2013, http://news.xinhuanetcom/politics/2013-
45
6.3. Compensation
A popular school of thought holds that villager discontentment about moving is a
question of money, and indeed that villagers are simply discontent because compensation
is inadequate. Alternatively, fairly compensated villagers or ones happy to move may
opportunistically complain in hopes of increased compensation.
I argue otherwise;
villagers often do not want to move because they do not like the destination or they simply
prefer staying put: urban-style housing strikes them as inappropriate, either for long-term
financial reasons or because they identify as peasants.
Nevertheless, some villagers
seemed to consider compensation central to their attitudes about moving. And I will not
argue that enough money cannot resolve almost anyone's qualms about moving, a point on
which the current developer was quite confident. Indeed, the developer has been generous
with promises of monetary compensation-but some of those promises have not been
honored, which has undermined their effectiveness at convincing additional households to
move.
The primary compensation was, however, in-kind: as many townhomes as
necessary to provide the same number of square meters as in the villager's old house.
Hence families often received two adjacent townhomes. However, townhomes came in
fixed numbers of square meters, and so villagers whose old housing would have entitled
them to a fractional townhome could top-up or shrink their compensation by buying or
selling extra floor space at about 2200 RMB per square meter.132 Yet this form of in-kind
reimbursement caused some complaints. Some with newer houses maintained that they
132
Interviews #48, 78
46
should be reimbursed for the added value of their new construction, 133 although the Village
Head pointed out that the newer houses tended to be significantly larger than the old
ones. 134 Indeed, two residents of smaller houses said that, while they were willing to move,
they were not willing to pay for the added square meters needed to exchange with the
smallest of the new townhomes.13 5 Those in smaller homes are often the poorest, and they
simply cannot afford the cost. 1 3 6 (Putting a market value on a rural house, which cannot
legally be sold, could have proved a challenge.)
Considering this in-kind compensation
alone, Old Spring Village's compensation is far more generous than in Rosenberg and Liu's
case studies and in Ahlers' research sites in Qingyuan, Zhejiang, where villagers are often
expected to buy their new houses, or in Looney's, where villagers are expected to build
their own house (albeit with some government support). Bray found an exchange system
similar to that in Old Spring Village,137 as did my exploratory fieldwork on the outskirts of
Fuzhou.13 8
Additionally, Old Spring villagers receive housing or rent subsidies to cover their
accommodation for the time between when their old house is destroyed and the new
building is ready.1 39 Moreover, villagers are to be paid 200 RMB for each day the new
Interviews #97, 112
Interview #85
135 Interview #104
136 Interview #116
137 Rosenberg, "Urbanising the Rural"; Bray, "Urban Planning Goes Rural"; Liu, "Upheaval in Chinese Villages:
A Case Study of Rural Land Expropriation for 'Large Scale' Commercial Farming in Rural China, LDPI Working
Paper #18"; Ahlers, Rural Policy Implementation in Contemporary China. Rosenberg 66, Bray 60, Liu 16,
Ahlers 70.
133
134
13 8
Interview #121
139
Interviews #57, 64, 65, 97
47
housing is late past an agreed upon deadline; needless to say, with construction halted, it
was already late at the time of research. 140
Further compensation was promised for assessed improvements to household
construction land other than the house, such as trees, for which most villagers claimed to
have been offered small sums. The compensation for trees was vastly lower than what
villagers thought appropriate, and indeed lower than the value of their produce as reported
even by satisfied villagers.1 41
The largest financial component of the compensation packages was a negotiated
payment, sometimes of several tens of thousands of RMB. Two families reported a promise
of 40,000 RMB in compensation, and another family 100,000 RMB, which was easily
several years' salary for them.1 42 However, these offers were made to households with
newly rebuilt homes, which may have cost more to build.
Yet promises of compensation packages only are as valuable as they are trusted.
The family promised 100,000 RMB has received less than that, but is waiting until they can
gather other villagers and together confront the previous developer about his debts.1 43
Likewise, some told us that their rent subsidies had not been delivered.144 As a result, even
tempting compensation deals might be turned down. One villager, offered a compensation
package that rose in value from 10,000 RMB to 100,000 RMB during negotiations, still
refused it because he did not believe the developer would actually pay him that much.145
Interviews #50, 56,57
Interviews #48, 51, 85, 112
Interviews #56, 57, 62, 106
143 Interview #56
140
141
142
144 Interview #87
145 Interview #68
48
6.4. Success Rate
There was contention about how successful the village had been at attaining
commitments to move. The deputy Village Head estimated that 80% of the village had
agreed to move at first; the developer said 95% had agreed, expressing confidence that
everyone eventually would.1 46 The Village Head estimated that over 10 households had
refused to move, but then his estimate fell to four to eight.1 47 We spoke to at least ten
households that told us they had refused to move (and many more who said they did not
want to).
Resistance to relocation has been significant in some places. In two of the northern
natural villages, several households told us that, while the village had initially sought to
relocate them, it had since either given up or decided to try first to relocate villagers in the
southern natural villages.1 48
Amidst all this, one household-apparently the Village Head's younger brother'sactively refused to move. A perfectly nice looking, normal, seven-year old house, his sits in
the middle of the unfinished relocation housing, edging onto plots that would have had
three buildings. His wife gave a standard if unusually nervous rendition of the reasons not
to move: the new houses were "not suitable" (bu heli F-A ) for a variety of design reasons.
Yet the deputy Village Head made clear they simply wanted more money-and, he wanted
to clarify, as relatives of the Village Head it would not be acceptable to pay them too much:
14 Interviews #64,96
147
148
Interview #85
Interviews #72,94, etc.
49
while they might receive money in the end, it won't be too much. But he bemoaned the
tendency of other villagers to blow the matter out of proportion.1 49
149
Interview #96
50
7. Relocation Housing: Design & Attitudes
"The look of things and the way they work areinextricably bound together, and in no
place more so than cities. [...] It is futile to plan a city's appearance,or speculate on how to
endow it with a pleasing appearanceof order, without knowing what sorts of innate,
functioning order it has. To seek for the look of things as a primarypurpose or as the main
drama is apt to make nothing but trouble."
-JaneJacobs'50
Jacobs' admonitions on the importance of proper design in cities holds true in
rebuilt villages.
But the designers of the new Old Spring village had emphasized
appearance and policy goals over villager livelihoods and preferences.
Unsurprisingly,
then, design of the relocation housing was a subject of widespread criticism among Old
Spring's villagers, serving for many as a reason not to move. For some, the problems were
technical, while for others the whole concept of more urban, dense housing was flawed.
Many of the concerns were rooted in the economics of rural life, others in the lifestyles to
which villagers were accustomed. Much of the concern came from those who identified
themselves as farmers.
7.1. Stairs, Cripples, & the Elderly
Every relocation unit was three to four stories tall, with a stairwell in the middle. In
a village disproportionately populated by the elderly and crippled-that is, those who can
no longer work as migrant laborers-this was poorly received. For them, going up stairs
Jane Jacobs, The Death and Life of Great American Cities, Vintage Books ed (New York: Vintage Books,
1992). 14-15.
150
51
was simply not possible. 15 1 At least one elderly grandmother who had moved found herself
isolated in the (level-entry) basement.15 2 Even one of the younger residents' main
complaints about the new houses was that living on the third floor was inconvenient.15 3
The failure to provide adequate housing for the elderly seems a major planning
oversight. The deputy Village Head protested that there were plans for an old age home for
those whose children were not in town or those who did not want to live with their
children.15 4 There is some question whether elderly villagers, accustomed to living with
extended family, would happily separate from them to live in an old age home. Supposing
they would, the architect's plans showed only 24 units. And while each unit was on one
floor, they were all one to three flights of stairs above ground level.155 But as the building
has not been built, it is as yet a moot matter.
7.2. Agriculture
Although per capita land holdings in Old Spring Village are relatively low, many
villagers continue to farm and consider themselves farmers or peasants (nongmin PJM).
Hence, as Ong and Rosenberg also identify in their research, the prospect of losing their
traditional courtyard (yuanzi PA-T) was particularly troubling.15 6 In Old Spring Village,
traditional homes are gated, walled compounds, with an often paved central yard that can
be used for parking vehicles, storing agricultural supplies or surplus, stockpiling firewood,
and raising animals (generally chickens or goats). The relocation housing provided, as a
1s1 Interviews #49, (52,) 61, 82, 109
Interview #65
Interview #106. However, one teenager who had not moved did cite this as an attraction. Interview #91.
154 Interview #96
15S "Old Spring Village IW
-_c I &A A
iCt I t.
156 Ong, "State-Led Urbanization in China"; Rosenberg, "Urbanising the Rural."
Ong 169-170; Rosenberg 67.
152
153
52
substitute, an in-unit garage (cheku 4-W) and an open-air, unguarded communal storage
area for agricultural machines.15 7 This constituted a significant loss of space, aggravated by
the insecurity of the communal open-air storage. Many villagers thus complained that they
would have nowhere to put their farming instruments.158 And they would also no longer
be able to plant income-generating trees on their house plots.15 9
Importantly, considering the loss of space for animals and for trees, the construction
land previously occupied by houses clearly also served as agricultural land, albeit highly
inefficiently, a phenomenon Bray also observes.1 60 Untying the construction rights from
this land and selling them to an urban area thus constitutes a net loss of de facto
agricultural land.
Another concern was where to put one's animals. Those with a sizable flock seemed
unconcerned: they expected to receive land, albeit not as near to their residences as were
their courtyards.161 But those who raised a mere handful of chickens were more troubled:
it was more important to them that their animals be near their houses.1 62 This problem
had not, however, been too acute for those who had already moved: they simply put their
chickens in cramped cages along the new village's alleys-as did the villagers in Liu's case
study.1 63
157
Interview #119.
One of the architects also said he had designed three rooms for agricultural tools, but
they had not yet been built.
158 Interview #(70,) 104, 106, 110, etc. Even one of the village leaders remarked that the new homes were not
so convenient for those with agricultural tools. Interview #96.
159 Interview #103
160 Bray, "Urban Planning Goes Rural." 61.
Interviews #92, 115
Interviews #107, etc.
163 Liu, "Upheaval in Chinese Villages: A Case Study of Rural Land Expropriation for 'Large Scale'
Commercial
Farming in Rural China, LDPI Working Paper #18." 15.
161
162
53
Some of the most contentious aspects of the relocation housing were the product of
conscious design and in keeping with national policy. As one villager put it, the rocation
houses "do not suit the countryside" (bu shihe nongcun 4%&A
f#).164 But this was
precisely the goal of one of the architects, who explained that his design did not
accommodate farm animals since they were trying to turn the villagers into urbanites
(chengshijumin Wfig-JX).165 This is in keeping with some national policies, which call for
separating animals from living quarters. 166
One concern sometimes raised about this type of project is the increased distances
farmers must travel to reach their fields. While a couple of villagers expressed annoyance
at this,1 67 few raised the subject and most seemed not to mind; they planned to walk, bike,
or motorbike to their fields, which would be at most ten minutes away.168
7.3. Utilities
The plans for the relocation housing pitch their improved utilities as a major draw:
not only will they have electricity and tap water, but they also will have natural gas, waste
water treatment, and a variety of communications services.1 69 For villagers, the advent of
these utilities is a mixed bag.
On the one hand, some celebrated the improved
convenience.1 70 On the other, many bemoaned higher costs, while expressing trepidation
at the prospect of using modern devices and parting with traditional sources of energy.
164
165
Interview #107
Interview #119
2008,
166
http://www.mohurd.gov.cn/zcfg/jsbwj_0/jsbwjczghyjs/200808/t20080826176666.html.
167
Interviews #51, 116
168
Interviews #40, 56, 115
"Old SpringVillage9
169
170
E.g., Interview #69
54
Section 2.3.
In their old homes, many villagers had electricity but used firewood (or if fortunate,
coal) for heating 1 7 ' and cooking. The transition to the relocation homes was associated
with using electricity or gas for heating and cooking, both significantly more costly than
free firewood collected within the village.1 72 Electric appliances also were intimidating to
some; others were loath to leave their old, more traditional kitchens.1 73 But while electric
bills had risen for those who relocated-in one case more than doubling1 74 -many
had
simply continued to use firewood. Indeed, firewood was stacked all along the alleys behind
the relocation housing. And the new units had not come with heating already installed
(although some had installed it themselves), so wood furnaces were not unusual, again, just
as in Liu's case study.175
As discussed above, the prospect of economically providing tap water had been a
motivation for the relocation project.
While some villagers were pleased, those
accustomed to spring water were annoyed that they would now have to pay for water, and
some continued to collect well water.1 76
7.4. Room Size & Quality
On a very pedestrian level, villagers often complained that the (legitimately
cramped) rooms in the new homes were small compared to the cavernous rooms of their
Homes were in most cases barely heated even on quite cold winter days.
Interviews #51, 61, 82, 96, 103, 106, 109, 111. National policy calls for reduced firewood use, presumably
for environmental purposes.
" W K _q IF f 4 i &A tA + .7 M M 1," March 16, 2011,
http://www.gov.cn/20111h/contentl825838.htm. Section 7.2.
173 Interviews #82, 116, etc.
174 Interviews #65, 66
175 Interviews #51, 56, 65, 69. The novelty of electricity and dense living had raised concerns
for a couple of
villagers that the new homes would turn out to be a safety hazard. E.g., Interview #68. Liu, "Upheaval in
Chinese Villages: A Case Study of Rural Land Expropriation for 'Large Scale' Commercial Farming in Rural
China, LDPI Working Paper #18." 15.
176 Interviews #51, 56, 57, 61, 65
171
172
55
old houses. 177 One of the architects attributed it partly to structural considerations and
partly to their "sense of design" (shejisiwei %itpV%),178
while their plans commended the
rooms as "on an appropriate scale" (heshi de chidu M&)Rj
). 179
Some villagers, both residents of the relocation housing and those who had not yet
moved, complained of shoddy construction. Others alleged that while the roadside houses
were on a solid foundation, those closer to the river valley were not.
However, one
otherwise disgruntled construction worker resident in the new houses conceded that they
were well enough built (haixing
ffj).180
7.5. Design Process
While some of the least popular design aspects reflected the social engineering
objectives of the architect and national policy, it was also clear that the design process had
included minimal villager involvement. Despite much emphasis in the architect's plans on
"respecting villager's opinions" (zunzhong nongmin yiyuan #1MJ
),181
no one in the
village seemed to have been involved in designing the homes. The Village Head seemed to
consider design to be of minimal import, and his superiors up to the district level were
befuddled that we were asking questions about architecture. The architect claimed to have
delivered the plans to the village representatives' meeting and received written feedback,
but could not be bothered to find it to share with us. 18 2
Interviews #56, 57, 116
Interview #119
179 "Old Spring Village lH 1
177
178
180
i
$
k
."
Interview #56
181 "Old Spring Village 1t
182 Interview #119
If
i Ak* * Aitt
k."
56
The design itself appeared to have been prepared, relatively autonomously and
without much thought or creativity, by an architecture firm in the district seat. The firm
had been, however, constrained by finances183 and the village government's desire for only
one type of house-which resulted in some families receiving multiple units as
compensation rather than a single larger unit. 184 The district Planning Bureau had then
approved the plans. 185
183
184
185
Interview #119
Interview #119
Interview #118
57
8. Urbanization & Economic Ramifications
8.1. Urban Layout
As discussed above, the architects sought to design an urban neighborhood. They
proposed a nearly grid-lined development almost entirely covered in pavement; this was a
dramatic change from several of the tree-bedecked older natural villages, which the
architects saw as "a disorderly mess caused by topography and a lack of planning" (shou
dixing dimaoyingxiang he queshaoguihua, cunzhuangjianshe buju sanluan
f )J'A9JJ,
#Eil9i-ffM9
l).186 Indeed, the architects feared this was not only bad
land use but also impacted the orderliness of the tourist area. So when asked the goals of
his design, one of the architects explained that he had sought a less scattered village that
would be more visually attractive for tourists.187
The resulting relocation homes were much more car-oriented than the existing
village, where houses are often connected by winding footpaths and some are not even
accessible by motor vehicle.
In the new village, concrete roads wrap around all the
buildings, and while pedestrians and cars share space, they do so on terrain designed for
the latter. As a result, by far the most visually striking aspect of the new village is its
emphasis on concrete surfaces. For the few villagers who have cars, the concrete roads are
no doubt a vast improvement, but they are at best far-sighted for the majority.
The area chosen for the relocation houses is a steep south-facing hill, allowing all
houses sunlight year round-but at the expense of a vertically disjointed four-tier
community. Houses lower on the hill are separated by a wall from houses one tier higher,
Spring Village I1 4I
187 Interview #119
186 "Old
d
1it
k."
58
so pedestrian access between adjacent tiers of homes requires circuitous travel.
Automobile access is worse, with the entire neighborhood sharing only one access point to
the north road.
8.2. Stores
In keeping with urban habits of zoning, the architect had designed one building for
stores and expected the other buildings to remain residential.1 88 The building for stores
has not been built yet, but three units facing on the north road have been turned into two
stores, which were popular gathering places for locals and a source of prepared food, such
as mantou and jianbing.189 That these road-front units (in a village where many road-front
homes are restaurants) were never intended to be stores was clear: they were cramped
and poorly suited to storing, let alone displaying, merchandise.
Yet there was money to be made. So the Village Head's nephew had turned the first
floor of his two units of relocation housing into a dry goods and prepared food store.1 90 A
decommissioned soldier from out of town, who had rented one unit from the Village Head's
other nephew for 1000 RMB per month, opened a fresh vegetable and meat store.191
Besides providing a modicum of employment-the vegetable and meat store had hired two
villagers-they were lucrative for the proprietors of the units.
Notwithstanding the
prominent role of the Village Head's nephews, one of the nephews said that lots had been
drawn and those who drew well were given first choice of where to move.1 92
188
189
Interview #119
Interviews #65, 97
190
Interview #57
191
Interview #69
192
Interview #57 vs. Interview #65
59
8.3. Social
Urbanization is not simply physical relocation to a more densely populated area; it
provides the context for changing modes of social interaction. Particularly in a uniform,
planned community such as the relocation homes, the built environment mediates social
interactions. With only 32 units built, it is in many ways premature to ask about the social
impacts of this urbanization project, yet some outcomes are already quite visible. Whereas
in the older natural villages there is almost no activity on the walkways and streets, there
are almost always people along the alleys of the relocation houses. Some of this traffic is
tending to household chores that would formerly have been done within the courtyard,
such as handling chickens or firewood.
Yet some of what has been taken from the
courtyard to the street has changed formerly insular activities, such as grandmothers
caring for their grandchildren, into communal ones. This is facilitated by the fact that, so
far, natural villages have not been mixed-nor are new physical barriers purposely built, as
they were in Bray's case study.1 93 It will be interesting to observe the evolution of these
interactions as multiple natural villages, formerly spread out, move together.
The closest analogue to these denser villages is probably the residential Chinese
work unit, or danwei (*{),
of the socialist era. While generally ensconced in a far larger
city, work units were relatively self-contained communities, with apartments and basic
services (a canteen, a kindergarten, etc.) provided within their walled compounds; children
could inherit their parents' jobs at the danwei. In fact, they were probably more insular
than today's rural China, where villagers emigrate in search of work. Because danwei
Bray, "Urban Planning Goes Rural." 60. While Liu also found increased social activity, it was in the context
of widespread malaise among villagers stripped of their farmland.
193
60
residents lived and worked together-and were crowded into quite limited space-these
urban settlements were typified by an unusually high degree of community: residents
knew one another and could gossip incessantly. 194 If this is a good model for a densified
village, then it is at odds with one of urban sociology's main findings: urbanization's
tendency to grant anonymity.1 95
The relocation homes have also prompted some households to divide earlier and
more often, beginning what could amount to a momentous change in family relations. In
courtyard homes, many consider it ideal for several generations to live together, and
siblings or children divide away from the household relatively late. In the relocation homes,
however, large families have incentives to decide on household division when they move in.
Households that received more than one unit of relocation housing had to choose whether
to merge the units or leave the wall separating them. If they merge the units, they have
financially, at least, committed to not dividing. So two families told us that they had left the
barrier intact but might tear it down if they had a good relationship with their future
daughter-in-law.196
In the short term, this makes for great inconvenience as family
members go outdoors to access half their house. But in the long run, it allows sons to
marry with less concern about whether their parents will get along well with their
spouse-and it may splinter what had been a strong tradition of extended families. Indeed,
as Bray notes, if this practicebecomes widespread, it will have significant consequences for
194 Gail Henderson, The Chinese Hospital: A Socialist Work Unit (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1984);
Lu,
Remaking Chinese Urban Form. Henderson 40-45. Lu 68.
195 e.g., Louis Wirth, "Urbanism as a Way of Life," American JournalofSociology 44, no. 1 (July 1, 1938): 1-24.
16
196 Interviews #97, 106
61
elder care and hence social insurance, as the earlier division of households will mean that
the elderly must maintain independent lives.197
8.4. Inequality
The project has a significant redistributive component, but also risks ossifying
existing inequalities and creating financial burdens for the poorest villagers. By replacing
each square meter of old housing, no matter its quality, with a square meter of relocation
housing of unrelated and approximately uniform quality, the project constitutes an
enormous subsidy to those with less investment in their old homes, mostly the poor. But
on the other hand, by giving each household the same number of square meters it
previously had, the compensation system benefits the wealthy, who often had larger
homes: after moving, it will be all but impossible to expand one's house. Moreover, those
who had built restaurant-homes along the north road often possessed abandoned houses in
their former natural villages, so would be receiving a relocation home to complement their
restaurant-home. 198
From the national perspective, increased provision of utilities and other public
services in rural areas is equalizing, reducing the huge rural-urban gap in government
investment and provision. But this can have perverse effects on the local level. For rich
households, it allows a more luxurious lifestyle. But for poorer ones, it reduces access to
productive assets (trees and livestock), while increasing costs (utility bills), a potentially
disastrous combination. Unsurprisingly, then, Old Spring villagers' attitudes towards the
project divided frequently along economic lines. Similarly, where peasants have not only
197
198
Bray, "Urban Planning Goes Rural." 61.
Interviews #63, 64
62
been moved to apartment buildings but have also lost their land, Ong observes more
widespread expense increases and income reductions. 199
Hence the nascent rural social insurance schemes will likely have to step in. The
plan for the relocation homes acknowledges this, calling for free or discounted gas for the
poor and the establishment of a "strong, seamless social insurance system to allow villagers
to fully enjoy [...] the village reconstruction program's rich achievements, and to live a
happy life not inferior to that of an urbanite." 200 Yet while local medical insurance seems
relatively effective for those fortunate enough to have diseases designated for high
reimbursement, the two main cash transfer programs seemed modest: old age pensions
could not single-handedly support the elderly, and the minimum livelihood guarantee
(dibao {.f*)
was a source of disaffection among poor villagers who felt the leadership
distributed benefits based upon family demographics and personal favors, not (as per
policy) purely by need. Moreover, these programs are administered at the district level, so
village-level fixes are unlikely.
On the other hand, stripping rural households of their self-sufficiency has the
potential to grow the local economy by forcing poorer villagers to live less economically
isolated lives and consume more, although the old age or physical incapacity of many
erstwhile self-sufficient villagers seems to limit this potential for growth. Furthermore, the
project largely arrests the village's internal real estate market, potentially redirecting
villager earnings from housing construction to other more immediate forms of
199 Ong, "State-Led Urbanization in China."
"Old Spring Village I#-c -1goX9Wktk
#_AAI**I
91991*-
*."
I-/
In Chinese: "A
Jt
63
M
A'
l:t ,
fL
P q A AUV At
-t_ *#KA-)
-
200
consumption. 201 (This is in stark contrast to the Ganzhou model of village renovation
described by Looney, which encourages villagers to spend their own money, combined
with loans and a government subsidy, to invest in new housing.202)
Still, while
consumption increases may occur, and two new stores have opened, the town seat would
seem a more appealing location for most non-agricultural economic activities, as it is quite
near and serves a much larger market. Indeed, provincial policy calls for concentrating
rural jobs in towns (and residences in villages). 203 Large agglomeration economies
likewise seem far-fetched given the emigration of much of the village's workforce, although
some are possible. But most likely seems continued out migration of villagers in search of
specialization in truly urban areas.
Returning to Jacobs' commentary, the new housing's urban form fails to make the
village urban. The sociologist Louis Wirth aptly defines a city as "a relatively large, dense,
and permanent settlement of socially heterogeneous individuals."
204
While village
reconstruction increases the village's density, its population remains relatively small and
homogeneous; the social and economic changes that tend to follow urbanism are absent. In
short, urbanization is more than the construction of a high density built environment.
Since a sizeable fraction of the village's local employment comes from construction, this could have
deleterious impacts on the village's internal economy.
202 Looney, "The Rural Developmental State."
201
203
2 04
A
# kfl
Wirth, "Urbanism as a Way of Life." 8.
J
k. Section 3.4.
64
9. Politics
9.1. Politicization of the Project
The Village Head insisted that the villagers were very happy with the project,205 and
the town wrote that the "destruction work had the support of the majority of the masses"
(chaiqiangongzuodedao daduoshu qunzhongde zhichi
i
kk
J Eq).206
But as we have seen, villager attitudes were a good deal more critical. Some felt fooled
(shangdang -
) by the village's insistence that the new homes would be better.207 Others
suspected the village leaders of profiting from the project, or simply distrusted the
developer. 208
One elderly woman even reached for Cultural Revolution vocabulary,
alleging that the purpose of the project was to "destroy the Four Olds" (qu sijiu -LhJ IfI). 2 09
Another man, sharing many villagers' cynical mindset, lamented that ruralites are always
the losers, despite loyally following policy.
210
Clearly, objections to the village
reconstruction project extended beyond personal dissatisfaction into the arena of politics.
Indeed, villagers associated the project with the village leadership and the Village Head
personally. 211
9.2. Electoral Implications
Section 6.2 shows clearly that villagers often chose not to resist the project outright
for fear of retribution.
Villagers also did not see much use for the village election in
resolving the matter. To some extent the village election was undermined by the Village
205
206
Interview #48
"Old Spring Village II:4&J
B I
I."
207 Interviews #56, etc.
Interviews #51, 52, 68, 107, etc.
Interview #65
210 Interview #71
208
209
211 Interviews #103, 106, etc.
65
Head's widely discussed plans to seek the more powerful and upwardly mobile position of
village Party Secretary. 212 He and the sitting Party Secretary were rumored to be on poor
terms, and the incumbent had apparently reached the retirement age. Villagers eagerly if
sometimes
nervously conveyed
rumors of the Party Secretary's corruption
and
ostentation; 213 the rumors were so uniform (including in their errors, which were often
unfavorable comparisons with the Village Head) that I was left to suspect a concerted
propaganda campaign.
By comparison, attitudes toward the Village Head were mixed. As with the rest of
the village leadership, he was a successful businessman-not an ordinary villager.
Yet
unlike his colleagues, his business interests were primarily in the village, and even among
some of his competitors in the restaurant industry, he was respected for his success. 214
(Others accused him of abusing his position or being a cheat.) Many thought he was hard
working and had done good for the village, and between his restaurant and his
construction projects, he employed a handful of villagers.
So while some of these
dependents (including relatives) could be among the most biting critics of the village
relocation project, and while they freely acknowledged the Village Head's role in it, they
argued forcefully that he was a good man.215 Others liked the project-including some
participants as well as residents of the several natural villages that were exempt from
relocation, who sometimes wished they could participate.
212
213
214
215
Interviews
Interviews
Interviews
Interviews
#97,
#50,
#88,
#97,
etc.
97, 102
etc.
etc.
66
Still, the Village Head had many detractors, including a few who suspected every
village's leadership was corrupt.21 6 While most of his critics could not impact the internal
Party election for Party Secretary, they could vote in the election for the next Village Head,
for which the sitting Village Head was widely expected to nominate a successor.
Some said they would vote for someone other than the Village Head's chosen
candidate. But most said they would vote for the Village Head's choice. One or two did not
trust the anonymity of ballots, 217 although others swore their votes were secret. 218 There
was no question, however, that the candidate would campaign. 219 (In the past, he would
have visited homes in the evening and offered small gifts and a little cash. Votes, it seemed,
were remarkably cheap, and it was apparently bad form to politely take gifts but vote for
another candidate.
There was some suspicion that such vote buying might have been
effectively forbidden since the last village election or rendered unnecessary by the Village
)
Head's increased power as a patron. 220
For those hostile to voting for the Village Head's nominee, finding a candidate
worthy of a vote was a problem. 221 Without an opponent who could plausibly win, and
none was suggested to us, decreasing the winning candidate's vote total seemed to
pointlessly risk village-wide retribution. 222 Moreover, the most disgruntled villagers
tended to be older, a group that seemed more intimidated by the village leadership.
(Incidentally, the elderly would be casting proxy ballots for their out-of-town relatives.)
Interviews #(62,) 65, 68, 90, 102, etc.
Interview #102
218 Interviews #103, 106
219 Interview #68, 103, 106
220 One villager pointed out that a candidate who received fewer votes than he expected would notice, and
might use his office or his connections to retaliate against the entire village.
221 Interview #106
222 Interview #106
216
217
67
As is well established, village elections give the population little leverage if they lack
effective challengers. 223 The Village Head's apparently sincere support base provided a
further buffer of protection for the leadership, even if it may have been a classic case of
dissociating a candidate from his policies.
One member of the leadership, however,
suggested a simpler explanation: he had no electoral fears since the villagers are all selfish
and do not care about the "general situation" (daju -k)93).
While villagers did not speak to us of the election as a way to censure the village
leadership, two did point to a more traditional route: petitioning higher levels of
government.
224
But here they returned to their original problem: they would be
identifiable and hence, they feared, in the words of one older woman, that the leaders
would "make [them] wear small shoes" (gei wo chuan xiaoxie eag/JNU).22s Others
considered even petitioning pointless because of the village leadership's connections with
higher officials and their survival of previous critiques. 226
In sum, villagers felt that any means they could use to resist or criticize the village
relocation project were risky, as the village leadership would find them out.
In an
environment where the village leadership could arrange painful retribution and villagers
cannot easily change their legal place of residence, compliance seemed safer. Yet while this
in part reflects the poor odds and high costs of resistance, it also places an upper bound on
the villagers' discontent; indeed, many villagers were happy with the incumbent leadership.
See, e.g., Richard Levy, "Village Elections, Transparency, and Anticorruption: Henan and Guangdong
Provinces," in GrassrootsPoliticalReform in Contemporary China, ed. Elizabeth Perry and Merle Goldman,
Harvard Contemporary China Series 14 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2007), 20-47. 27-28.
224 Interview #93, 103
225 Interview #93
226 Interviews #68, 76, 102
223
68
10. Conclusion
Overall, I found Old Spring Village's reconstruction project to be poorly defined,
with village leaders, villagers, and the current developer extremely confused about
relatively basic matters, such as which areas were included. Perhaps relatedly, those with
influence over the project were by and large not invested in its details-particularly its
design-which seemed among the driving complaints of the villagers themselves. Indeed,
studied ignorance of the villagers' displeasure was the norm. A notable exception was the
district Planning Bureau, which seemed agitated by the poor treatment of villagers under
village reconstruction programs.
Yet here extraordinary naivet6 was on display: the
planner expressed surprise that for-profit developers have been trying to make money
rather than working in the best interests of villagers. 227
As the planner noted, financing was a fundamental issue. The structure of the
project-providing land as well as subsidies to the developer-and presumably many of
the problems surrounding compensation were rooted in a shortage of cash. It is simply
difficult to relocate people and keep them happy without adequate money. On the other
hand, Old Spring Village's compensation was, it seems, comparatively generous.
Relocation, meanwhile, raises complicated questions of property rights. The project
as a whole clearly undermined villagers' rights to their housing plots. While the formality
of collecting signatures dignifies property rights, and suggests concern on the part of
higher levels of government about potential excesses on the local level, signatures can be
wrangled from villagers who do not actually want to move. Hence, generally, it is villagers,
227
Interview #118
69
in and out of government, who decide if property rights are substantive, both through
intimidation by the leadership and cooperation by the rest. On the one hand, the villagers'
choice not to resist suggests that their disgruntlement with the project is not extreme. On
the other, the ability of the village leadership to tamp down resistance-be it a refusal to
sign away one's house, a wayward vote, or a petition to above-reflects on the significant
retaliatory powers at its disposal. Indeed, it is hard to imagine functioning property rights,
let alone village democracy, if the village leadership is to retain such personal power and
the wherewithal to wield it arbitrarily. There is no reason to believe that tweaking rural
property rights will change this power relationship substantively.
But while an exercise in political power, Old Spring Village's reconstruction program
is also a matter of land politics and urbanization. As a scheme to transfer construction land
quota to urban areas, it is probably successful. However, it does result in a net loss of
agricultural land by taking household construction land that is, in reality, used in part for
agriculture.
As a one-size-fits-all government urbanization program that sought to
reengineer a rural community with urban design, it was bound to elicit disparate responses.
For a small handful, the new homes seemed appropriate.
satisfied villagers as the office workers (shangban zu
One villager identified these
J- W)W).228
Indeed, there was a
group-slightly broader than the village's few office workers-that sought urban amenities
and invested heavily in their new homes.229 They were pleased with the project.
But for the most part the villagers did not embrace urban life, objecting to the design
of their new settlement and circumventing its urbanizing agenda. They kept their chickens
228
229
Interview #66
Interviews #69, 96
70
and their firewood; they complained about the loss of their rural lifestyle; some even
fetched water from the well. Hence urbanizing erstwhile rural homes will likely take
time-and the difficulty of the task raises questions, as well, about the eagerness of migrant
workers to fully urbanize in cities.
To the extent that this in situ urbanization requires separating peasants from their
animals and convincing them to use utilities, it is economic as well as psychological.
Stripping the poorest villagers of easy access to money-saving livestock and encouraging
them to spend more money on utilities runs the risk of destroying the self-sufficiency of
these households. Economic growth or, more likely, welfare programs will have to step in
to help. Yet while eminently possible, building a village economy on subsidies is not the
program's goal. So presumably the preponderance of villagers are to find other ways to
support themselves economically. One approach would be specialization within the village.
But besides tourism (to which the relocation area's plan repeatedly refers and on which the
town seems eager to base its rural economy), agriculture, and perhaps elder care, it is not
clear what specialties the village is fit for; and these sectors seem unlikely to employ the
whole village. Handing out recovered farmland in small, equal plots to each villager seems
a poor start down the road to specialization, although the village's tendency towards
cooperatives may equitably and efficiently solve this problem.
Regardless, villagers have for years been migrating to urban areas to seek
employment Hence the village itself serves for many of its legal residents as something
between a vacation home, a convalescent home, and a retirement home. It seems strange
to build such a large supply of new housing-more than existed beforehand-in an area
that, given free mobility, younger residents would probably choose to desert, particularly
71
in a town that plans for its own rural population to fall by over a quarter by 2030.230 And,
having decided to build housing, it seems stranger still to make it so difficult for the
handicapped or elderly to navigate.
Indeed, questions of architectural and urban design are at the foundation of the
project. The local state did not focus on design in implementing the project, although in
accordance with central dictates design was used to engineer villager in situ urbanization.
Yet design was fundamental to the often negative responses of villagers. And it is design
that seems set to bring about changes in social interaction and economic behavior within
the village.
It is important to caution, at this point, that this thesis presents findings from a
single village reconstruction project, and moreover that the project in that village is only
partially built.
A broader understanding of the process and impacts of village
reconstruction will have to rest upon the analysis of more case studies.
"Hill Break Town 4M:M." Section 41. Some of this decline in rural population can probably be
Attributed to plans to move villages adjacent to the town seat into the town seat itself. Indeed, the town
expects the town seat population to grow so much that the town's total population will grow slightly.
230
72
11.
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