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‘Resettlement with Chinese characteristics’: the distinctive political-economic context, (in)voluntary urbanites, and three types of mismatch

‘Resettlement with Chinese characteristics’: the distinctive political-economic context,... INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF URBAN SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT 2021, VOL. 13, NO. 3, 496–515 https://doi.org/10.1080/19463138.2021.1955364 ‘Resettlement with Chinese characteristics’: the distinctive political- economic context, (in)voluntary urbanites, and three types of mismatch Chen Yang and Zhu Qian School of Planning, University of Waterloo, Waterloo, ON, Canada ABSTRACT ARTICLE HISTORY Received 29 June 2020 In recent years, urban resettlement as a specific form of urbanisation has gained its Accepted 3 July 2021 momentum in planning practices to accommodate newcomers of cities, in line with the macro policy reforms of urban-rural integration. This paper synthesises literature KEYWORDS related to the proposed term ‘urban resettlement with Chinese characteristics’ to Urban resettlement; Chinese shed light on the distinctive and unparalleled socio-economic and spatial transforma- characteristics; landless tion entailed by the ongoing urban resettlement in China. Mindful of China’s socialist villagers; urban-rural ideology and authoritarian regime, we argue that urban resettlement has become development; mobility a potent tool for the Chinese government to fuel economic development and urbanisation. The longstanding issues such as involuntary resettlement have been alleviated with the gradualist institutional changes, but emerging predicaments concerning social mismatch, space mismatch, and spatial mismatch still linger. This paper calls for researchers to draw lessons and implications from the discourse of ‘urban resettlement with Chinese characteristics’ to expand the knowledge of sus- tainable urban-rural development. Introduction climate change. Early resettlement literature was writ- ten by anthropologists in the mid-fifties and early The year 2020 marks an iconic milestone for the sixties who studied dam-induced resettlement in Communist Party of China (CPC) and the Chinese African countries, such as Egypt and Ghana nation (zhonghua minzu) to achieve the comprehen- (Terminski 2015). The focal point gradually shifted sive establishment of ‘a moderately prosperous towards Asia because of the high population growth society’ in China’s long-range development strategic and rampant urbanisation process. Mega develop- plan. One year later, President Xi Jinping announced ment projects such as the Sardar Sarovar Dam in that China had scored a ‘completely victory’ in fight - India, transnational dam constructions alongside the ing against poverty. This long enduring process is Mekong River, and the well-known Three Gorges Dam achieved through China’s consistent efforts of institu- in China have frequently prompted concern (Neef and tional changes concerning the ‘three rural issues.’ Singer 2015). Similar to the adaptation of neoliberal- Resettlement has become a key tool in facilitating ism theory in China’s context (Lim 2014), urban reset- the development of the impoverished peasantry, tlement theory and praxis in China are by no means with some 9.6 million farmers are resettled during the same as explicated by the western literature the Thirteen Five-Year Plan (2016–2020) to alleviate (Connell 2012; Bonney 2013). Urban resettlement in poverty (Xinhua News Agency 2020). As Rogers and China has not been systematically examined yet due Wilmsen (2019) summarised, research on resettle- to its institutional (Tang et al. 2016), social (Zhang ment incorporates two strands of literature, focusing et al. 2017), and economic (Siciliano 2014) particula- on (1) resettlement as a vehicle for development and rities. Moreover, the political economy of socialist (2) resettlement as the resolution for adaptation to CONTACT Chen Yang c273yang@uwaterloo.ca School of Planning, University of Waterloo, 200 University Avenue West, Waterloo, ON, N2L 3G1, Canada © 2021 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF URBAN SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT 497 China has complicated resettlement, especially when ‘backwards’ or ‘lacking’ so as to justify the interven- it comes to the trade-offs between government inter- tion of resettlement development. The powerful state ventions and market economy laws. This paper aims dominance in China’s urbanisation has therefore to unveil the Chinese characteristics of urban resettle- become integral to resettlement planning, implemen- ment from three separate but entangled aspects, pay- tation, and appraisal (Xu et al. 2011; Ren 2017). This ing special attention to the changing political- paper further expands the existing knowledge of economic context, existing socio-economic and insti- urban resettlement in China through a lens of tutional barriers, and post-resettlement adaptation. In China’s gradualist and progressive manner of institu- the meanwhile, we dissect urban resettlement in tional adjustments to promoting urbanisation (Zhu China from the affected people’s perspective, under- 1999; Sofield and Li 2011). In the following sections, standing their rationality and agency in adapting to we first define the term ‘urban resettlement’ in this such resettlement practices. paper to distinguish urban resettlement from other During the last decades, after the marketisation of forms of resettlement projects, such as development- land in post-reform China, urbanisation has consumed induced and climate change-related resettlement. a massive amount of rural land (29,579 km as of Subsequently, we synthesise the literature on urban 2017). The land-driven economy is still the case in resettlement according to the three aspects men- China and will continue in the next couple of years tioned earlier. Given China’s longstanding efforts in (Lin 2014; Qun et al. 2015; Y. Liu et al. 2018). The balancing development and social stability, urban and capitalist urbanisation process has significantly homo- rural areas, this paper situates resettlement in the genised Chinese cities to a universal and general changing dynamics of China’s urban-rural develop- typology coupled with an increasingly urbanised ment. To be specific, how do China’s unique political- population (60% as of 2019). In megacities like economic settings influence the unfolding of urban Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, and Hangzhou, urban resettlement in China? How has urban resettlement resettlement prevails in their development and mod- evolved to facilitate landless farmers’ adaptation as ernisation process (Liu et al. 2016; Qiu and Xu 2017; urbanisation progresses in China? Lastly, what are the Ming Zhang and Wang 2013). The resettlement in major issues incurred by urban resettlement that hin- China is a complicated phenomenon manifested in der landless farmers’ adaptation to the host urban various forms, including the land dispossession during societies? We conclude by making suggestions on urban expansion, the redevelopment of urban vil- future research agendas to incorporate urban reset- lages, the regeneration of inner urban areas, and tlement in China as a critical aspect of achieving much intricated ‘sedentarisation of herding commu- a sustainable human settlement. nities’ (Rogers and Wilmsen 2019). This paper seeks to unpack how urban resettlement can be used by the The scope of ‘urban resettlement’ in China Chinese government to fuel its rapid urbanisation process and achieve integrated urban-rural develop- Resettlement is defined by the World Bank (2015) as ment (Wei et al. 2018). a process that involves assisted efforts to facilitate the Prior literature on urban resettlement in China has affected to ‘improve, or at least to restore, their focused on the agents of government and developers incomes and living standards.’ The phenomenon has (Gu and Wu 2010; Wei 2012; Cao et al. 2014), whereas garnered wide attention from scholars in the Global the resettled farmers’ agency to adapt to this imposed North, but the intellectual battlegrounds are primarily resettlement is underexamined. This is largely due to in the Global South (Neef and Singer 2015; Rogers and the assumption that resettlement generally results in Wilmsen 2019). International organisations like the the improvement of resettlers’ livelihood. Although World Bank and Asian Developmental Bank serve as some studies (Lo et al. 2016; Xiaojun et al. 2017; Wei; the main agents funding development projects, Liu et al. 2018) claim there is an increase in income for which are likely to result in migration, resettlement displaced people, some critiques highlight the reset- and displacement of the local residents. Since urbani- tlement’s adverse impact on the displaced people, sation has become a global condition (Brenner and especially the destruction of their social relations Schmid 2014), we hereby conceptualise resettlement (Gomersall 2018). As Sargeson (2013a) pointed out, as a specific form of urbanisation that entails the the resettled are pre-defined by the government as creative destruction of the siting community’s spatial, 498 C. YANG AND Z. QIAN 2 3 social, and economic arrangements. The enclosure of aiming at rural revitalisation. The most recent landscape in peri-urban and rural areas has acceler- attempt made by the central state to establish ated capital circulation at the cost of millions of rural a Common Wealth Demonstration Zone in Zhejiang residents, not only in the form of ‘accumulation by Province is a big milestone to realising the Marxist dispossession’ (Harvey 2008). objective of eliminating the urban-rural divide Resettlement in China comes in various forms: the (Xinhua News Agency 2021). As an important form widely practiced development induced displacement of urban-rural development, urban resettlement and resettlement, the resettlement as development needs in-depth exploration. targeting poverty alleviation in the countryside, intra- Urban resettlement is the direct consequence of urban resettlement resulting from urban redevelop- land finance in China. The large body of literature on ment projects, and urban resettlement of land-lost land finance has documented how China managed to farmers due to urban expansion and land expropria- achieve such high-speed growth within a regime tion (Wang and Lo 2015; Wu 2016b; Liu J 2017; Wei; where central government and local government are Liu et al. 2018). The last form is the main research in a win-win situation (Lin 2014; Liu et al. 2016b; object of this paper, which will be referred to by using Zhang and Wu 2017; Huang and Chan 2018). Against ‘urban resettlement.’ In China, urbanisation is defined this economic triumph, another body of literature on as ‘a complex and multifaceted process involving land expropriation pays heightened attention to the population migration from rural to urban areas, rural sufferings of land-lost farmers being deprived of their and urban land conversions, spatial reconfiguration of land and displaced from their original settlements settlements, and changing governance’ (Gu and Wu (Siciliano 2014; Lin et al. 2018; Xie 2019; Zhang and 2010, p. 1–2). We can easily peek from the definition Qian 2020; Kan 2020). The longstanding property that rural-urban dualism is the most substantial fea- rights ambiguity issue associated with China’s land ture that distinguishes China’s urban transformation ownership has further stigmatised urban resettlement from its international counterparts. This entrenched practices in China (Qian 2019; He et al. 2009; Zhang urban-rural divide has its historical and socio- et al. 2018). Urban resettlement, therefore, has economic roots in China’s long history as an agricul- remained a subordinated research subject compared tural country and the legacy of the National Party’s to urbanisation and the broad land issue in China. In ruling before the civil war. Facing the underdevelop- this sense, it is essential to foreground urban resettle- ment reality, the Communist Party of China employed ment to deepen our understanding of the changing an urban-biased development strategy to catch up urban-rural dynamics in China, particularly as an with developed Western countries in the post-reform emerging form of rural-urban population transfer. period (Wang et al. 2019). The household registration Indeed, Chan (2012) contented that hukou reclassifi - system (hukou zhidu) emerged in 1958 and has since cation, rather than net migration, was the primary become a defining identity of Chinese society, which contributor to the recent urban population explosion. bears the brunt of criticism during China’s social and The transition from rural residents to urban residents economic transformation. In post-reform China, the is an enduring process that involves the social inte- urban-rural relations have undergone intensive trans- gration of economic, social, and political dimensions, formations under the paradigm shifts of China’s urba- which has been extensively examined by Chinese nisation (Zhu et al. 2019). China’s socialist ideology scholars and is termed as ‘citizenization’ (Liu et al. demands an ultimate urban-rural integration rather 2012; Shan 2014; Feng and Ye 2017; Xu et al. 2019). than the urban-rural antagonism that is bound to In sum, urban resettlement in this paper is defined happen in capitalist development (Mili 2019). as a special form of urbanisation through which farm- Against this backdrop, the term ‘coordinated urban- ers transform into urbanites through the creative rural development’ was formalised by the written destruction of their socio-economic conditions. To provisions that came into being at the 16th Party our best knowledge, existing research on this form Congress in 2002. Later on, urban-rural integration of resettlement in China has mainly adopted case has become macro policy rhetoric and a national study approach (Hu et al. 2015; Qian and Xue 2017; priority of rural reforms and China’s subsequent Five- Wu et al. 2019; Xie 2019) partly due to the uneven Year Plans (11th, 12th, and 13th). In recent years, geography of Chinese cities (Li 2012; Chen et al. 2019). China has initiated a new round of policy reforms Therefore, this research lacuna calls for a systematic INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF URBAN SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT 499 and contextualised exposition of the subject. This ideology of neoliberalism (Wu 2008; Chu and So review aims to fill this gap by synthesising existing 2010). Furthermore, neoliberal planning that favours literature to forge a multi-layered but relatively fine- pro-growth and market-friendly state-market rela- grained understanding of urban resettlement in con- tions also demonstrates variations in China. China’s temporary China. authoritarian regime substantially differs from the neoliberal planning practices in North American and Western European countries (Wu and Phelps 2011), China’s distinctive political-economic context where the retreating state is actually gaining a more The political landscape of Asian countries, especially proactive role in introducing market mechanisms in China, has determined the development path of reset- planning. Wu (2015) asserted that China’s post-reform tlement projects. The state-dominated resettlement planning is featured by rescaling instead of retreat, reminds us of the protracted discourse of planned aiming at the market but also consolidating state economy versus market economy in China (Tang power. As such, neoliberal planning has been used 1994; Ma 2002; Qian 2014). Whether strong govern- by both central and local governments to fuel the ment interventions under socialism would lead to deregulated market-oriented growth. promising outcomes has yet to be seen. Indeed, the Against this socialist neoliberal backdrop, urban land institutions in place have been criticised for resettlement is tacitly sanctioned and even promoted being ‘wrong’ by scholars who uphold Western neo- by the Chinese state under the banner of planning for classic economics theories that private ownership growth and planning for the market. However, leads to better economic performance and prosperity although the state controls the allocation of land (Ho 2013; Webster et al. 2016). The gradual decentra- resources, China’s treatment of land related to reset- lisation and the deployment of market-driven urban tlement varies significantly from the ‘eminent domi- development under neoliberalism have profoundly nation’ in India and a pro-market process in socialist affected resettlement projects. While the hegemonic Vietnam (Phuc et al. 2014; Parwez and Sen 2016; Ren capitalist mode of production has penetrated China’s 2017). Chinese government exercise much regulatory urbanisation process (Chan 2012; Brenner and Schmid power over urban resettlement and land conversion. 2015), some pronounced socialist features character- In practice, while the developers sometimes partici- ise urban resettlement in China, including socialist pate in the resettlement project of land-lost farmers, neoliberalism, landed finance and the public owner- the local government makes ultimate decisions. ship of land. These three bodies of literature can Urban resettlement aligns with neoliberal principles enhance our understanding of urban resettlement in that favour property market and suburbanisation and China’s distinctive political-economic context. caters to the central government’s pursuit of urban- First, neoliberalism has unfolded in China in a way rural integrated development and local government’s that follows the ‘authoritarian turn’ of neoliberalism fiscal demands. It creates an overall promising pro- (Peck and Theodore 2019) that features ‘more unilat- spect except for the land-lost farmers in some cases, eral actions of authoritarian states than democratic which will be examined in-depth in subsequent consent to impose neoliberal practices’ (Su and Qian sections. 2020, p. 3). The proliferation of literature on China’s Second, the landed finance is a phenomenon rela- neoliberalism and the entrepreneurial government tively unique to China. Land commodification and has clearly revealed the political-economic backdrop land financialization in China add knowledge about of China’s unprecedented urbanisation. The urbanisa- the role of land in urban growth and development. tion parallels the displacement of people and pea- For the former, Lin (2014) pointed out that land sants from their settlements to be resettled commodification rather than human capital and elsewhere in usually concentrated and gated urban advanced technology that are main contributors to communities (Zhao and Zou 2017). A consensus has Western urbanisation played an instrumental role in been made that the process of neoliberalisation in China; for the latter, Liu et al. (2016) concluded that China is inscribed with strong ‘Chinese contra to Western countries where suburbanisation Characteristics’ (Harvey 2005a; Ong 2007; Peck and results from the capital switch from the primary Zhang 2013), and China’s post-reform market econ- circuit to the secondary circuit, China’s capital accu- omy boom is undeniably attributed to the hegemonic mulation is facilitated by land-reserve and financing 500 C. YANG AND Z. QIAN systems that local governments deliberately orches- Third, China’s ambiguous property rights institu- trate. As we argued before, China’s neoliberalism tion is relatively credible and effective in the current unfolding does not lead to a wholesale retreat of stage (Ho 2014, 2016; Sun and Ho 2020). An extensive the state, but reinforces the state’s governance, literature stresses that clearly defined private property especially for the local governments. What becomes rights are the prerequisite for economic development unique for China is that instead of following the (Deininger et al. 2015; Sun 2016; Ho 2017). However, orthodox neoliberalism framework of the diminish- in China’s authoritarian management of production ing and minimum state at this stage, it diverts to elements, the land is either collective-owned or state- another form of re-orientation, from ‘redistributive owned. The enigma that has long plagued scholars is state’ to the ‘entrepreneurial state(s)’ (Wu 2008). Wu that China’s economic boom is rooted in ‘wrong insti- (2010) further addressed that the ruthless commodi- tutions,’ including ‘authoritarian, non-transparent, fication and privatisation process undermine Chinese unclear, ambiguous and insecure’ (Ho 2013, p. 1088). social stability after Deng Xiaoping’s southern tour in While China’s property rights ambiguity has been 1992, which led to extensive lay-offs as a new under- explicated through various perspectives (Zhang and class and the suspension of social housing provision, He 2020; Zheng and Ho 2020; Cai et al. 2020; Wang contributing to the development of entrepreneurial and Tan 2020), we seek further to explore this topic governance. from the perspective of urban resettlement. We iden- The paradox in this shift is while the theory of tify that: 1) the local predatory government takes neoliberalism advocates the minimisation of state’ advantage of this ambiguity to advance urban reset- intervention to the free market (Harvey 2005a, p. 2), in tlement, 2) the central government is promoting gra- the authoritarian regime like China, the disempower- dualist institutional changes to achieving equitable ment of central state de facto reinforces the ‘sover- property rights, and 3) collective ownership of rural eignty’ (Hsing 2010) of the local states with more land can be conducive to landless farmers’ post- autonomy (Harvey 1989a, p. 14) on devising the land resettlement adaptation. economy to adapt to the neoliberal urbanisation. This Qian (2007; 2017; 2019) argues that the local gov- argument aligns with many scholar’s observations that ernment uses coercive measures such as land expro- notwithstanding resembling neoliberalism to some priation to appropriate the rural land from rural extent, China’s land commodification is primarily led collectives justified by ‘public interests’ to generate by the party-state rather than the capitalist class (Ong profits. In such practices, property rights ambiguity 2007; Wu 2016b; Horesh and Lim 2017). Furthermore, reinforces the power imbalance among actors of He and Wu (2009) highlighted the importance of land local government, rural collective and siting farmers, and housing reform in the late 1990s in facilitating the which further exacerbates the unfair redistribution. neoliberal shifts of China from an egalitarian society to The land system in China went through a marketised society. Besides, they claim that a new a privatisation-socialisation-marketisation process, nexus of governance has emerged wherein the local and the institutional setting also evolved accordingly state is more proactive in the practice of neoliberal (Qiu and Xu 2017). China’s central government has urbanism within the framework devised by the central proactively engaged in institutional changes as government. The defining feature of land commodifi - a top-down effort in recalibrating the existing dys- cation is anchored with China’s neoliberal urbanism, functional system (Lin 1989; North 1990). Liu et al. which is controlled by China’s authoritarian govern- (2019) conceptualised this fluid state as ‘property ment intervention (Ong 2007). This prevailing land con- rights regimes in transition’, which involves reassign- sumption directly leads to the encroachment of rural ing ‘operational level rights’ to reach a new balance lands surrounding the existing urban boundary, among actors involved. In 2020, the revised Land thereby creating landless farmers and fierce collisions Administration Law standardised the legitimised responding to the land grabbing (Lin 2010). Therefore, rural land transactions. Specifically, it seeks to safe- the resultant resettlement is not produced solely by guard farmers’ rights and interests by clarifying land market-driven spatial enclosure but is contributed property rights and the vague formulation of ‘public much by the local entrepreneurial government’s delib- interests’ (Wen et al. 2020). Furthermore, recent stu- erate embracement of ‘spatial fix’ to attract and absorb dies have suggested that collective land ownership capital investment. can enhance farmers’ bargaining power against local INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF URBAN SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT 501 government and provide a reliable source of income Literature has documented much about the social for land-lost farmers (Sargeson 2013; Qian 2015). In instability inflicted by land expropriation in China, Hangzhou, the local government leaves rural collec- including impoverishment, violence, and social segre- tive a certain percentage (often 10%) of the land gation (Sargeson 2013; Vanclay 2017; Zhang and Qian expropriated. The retained land is then converted 2020). Land expropriation, or domestic land grabbing to urban construction land and can be used for (Siciliano 2014), involves the transformation of collec- market purposes, which realises the hidden market tive-owned rural land to urban land for market pur- value of the rural land. In the long run, the retained poses and the resettlement of landless farmers. collective land can provide sustainable economic According to China’s Land Administration Law, those benefits as well as employment opportunities for farmers are entitled to a compensation package that the resettled villagers, facilitating their adaptation facilitates their post-resettlement adaptation. to urban societies. In addition, the property Nevertheless, this package does not guarantee a fair exchange has become a primary form of compensa- monetary compensation based on land’s market value tion for landless farmers during resettlement (Hu since the scheme is designed mainly according to the et al. 2015), which provides another outlet for prop- original use of agricultural production. The exclusion erty rights reform. of rural collectives and individuals from the decision- The shocking magnitude of near 250 million dis- making process has been criticised for many potential placed peasants in China by 2025 (Johnson 2013) reasons: shortcomings in governance, institutional alarms urban scholars to seriously interrogate the deficiencies, speculative behaviours of local actors, phenomenon and the drivers that fuel the great trans- and property rights ambiguity (Qian 2015; Tang et al. formation. In the socialist neoliberal political- 2015). Over time, extensive literature has developed economic context, China’s urbanisation unfolds in on two contentious aspects of China’s urban develop- a balanced manner that combines state control over ment, including the negotiation of compensation (Tao land and market-driven capital circulation. In light of and Xu 2007; Hui et al. 2013; Wang et al. 2017) and this, urban resettlement has become a potent tool in violent confrontations (Escobar 2004; Chen et al. 2013; planning for growth, market, entrepreneurial govern- Sargeson 2013). Facing the abrupt and involuntary ance, equitable property rights, and urban-rural inte- displacement, peasants have to grasp the compensa- gration. On a macro level, urban resettlement and tion package as the last straw from the government. urbanisation in China have been successful with pro- The compensation package generally comes in three mising statistics, but whether it improves landless forms:1) compensation for the original land, 2) allow- farmer’s livelihood and welfare warrants further ance for the resettled, and 3) compensation for unhar- investigation. vested crops (Lin and Ho 2005). In a recent review, Qian (2015) reported that land requisition compensa- tion has gradually improved in many aspects in recent Voluntary or involuntary Urbanites years, generating a more sophisticated hybrid Building on the contextual setting outlined in the approach that encompasses monetary compensation, previous section, this section covers more literature employment alternatives, and others. However, Wang on how urban resettlement has changed over the et al. (2017) pointed out that compensation is often years. We seek to explore whether urban resettlement unevenly distributed, with large rooms of negotiation is a voluntary or involuntary process by delving into at the locale. three bodies of literature on land expropriation, com- On the one hand, the negotiation opens the win- pensation, and the hukou system. Wilmsen and Wang dow for displaced villagers to claim more monetary (2015) claimed that voluntary and involuntary reset- rewards from their land expropriation; on the other, tlement is a false dichotomy in China since the two given the power relations within the village, the may transform to each other, thus resettlement masses are likely to gain lower compensation com- should be based on ‘a commitment to settlement pared to those who have social connections with not just resettlement’ (p.612). While this argument is village cadres or dominant clan. While the situation valid in its own right, this section focuses on whether has drawn attention from the central government, the the changing conditions of urban resettlement have existing legislative policy lags behind the rampant eased landless farmers’ transition to urbanities. land acquisition in place, which inevitably 502 C. YANG AND Z. QIAN compromises the compensation (Hui et al. 2013). It is process under the banner of modernisation, specifi - worth noting that compensation schemes should not cally with displacement. The forceful land expropria- be viewed homogeneously. To wit, compensation tion violates the fundamental security of peasants standards in developed coastal areas differ substan- without further accommodations for their adaptation tially from those of western regions. This spatial het- to the new urban environment through erogeneity complicates the perception of land a participatory process. Building on Escobar’s compensation associated with resettlement. For research, Sargeson (2013) proposed the notion of those who receive a large lump-sum monetary com- ‘violence as development’ to further explain the pensation, conspicuous consumption behaviour expropriation violence, calling for attention to ‘peo- becomes problematic (Bao et al. 2017). The transition ple’s participation in political-economic processes’ from inadequate compensation to over- (p.1081). Notably, the violence and the protest are compensation in some parts of China has critically mainly against the local government (township), challenged our traditional conception that enough which, in So’s (2007) view, is ascribed to the neoliberal compensation brings harmonious post-resettlement bifurcated state with a ‘benign’ centre and social adaptation. For instance, the term ‘chai erdai’ a ‘predatory’ local apparatus juxtaposed in post- (literally meaning the second generation of resettle- reform China. This assertion is evident in recent ment households) has gained wide attention in ‘hecun bingju’ (village consolidation) in Shandong Chinese academia. Province where local villagers were forcibly displaced Accompanying the compensation are sometimes and inadequately compensated. Although the Rural petitions, protests, and violent confrontations. Zhong Revitalisation Strategic Plan (2018–2022) clearly states et al. (2010) noted that China is known for its massive that ‘farmers shall not be forcibly relocated and con- land-use change and surge in land conflicts. The pro- centrated in apartments,’ the contentious resettle- portion of land expropriation accounts for 73.2% of ment in Shandong Province has clearly violated this Chinese farmers’ petitions concerning land issues (Lin rule. et al. 2018). The aforementioned property rights ambi- In Shandong’s case, while the village consolidation guity has intensified the conflict about land expropria- intends to deal with the ‘hollowing villages’ (Zhao and tion. Sargeson (2013) argued that in China, Zhang 2017) and improve rural land-use efficiency, ‘expropriation violence is an expression of popular the misconducts of local governments during the demand for real property rights in the land’ (p.1073). implementation renders the resettlement proble- Since property rights conversion is an integral part of matic for rural villages. For example, different from land development (Huang and Chan 2018), local gov- other ‘hollowing villages,’ there is a large population ernments use economic incentives and political of young adults in Xiaofan village, who still inhabit repressions to propel the process. In the face of the there and are engaged in agricultural production. forced resettlement, the rural collective and indivi- Local villagers’ primary concerns about the upstairs duals are often passive recipients given the uncertain lifestyle include: no place to park farm equipment property rights and weak collective organisation such as tractors, the expenses burden of utilities and structures (Yan et al. 2018). Lack of property rights maintenance fees, and the employment loss. In addi- leads to the denial of China’s landless farmers’ right to tion, the compensation offered cannot even meet the the city (Harvey, 2003). While Sargeson (2013) found construction cost of the new apartments, which a political maturation of villagers to resist expropria- requires the villagers to pay additional money for tion through protests and activist mobilisation, such the difference. The difference can reach more than movements are limited to claims for rights to subsis- 100,000 yuan, which is a huge burden for the peasan- tence (Shin 2013) and fair compensations (Ren 2017). try. Worse still, due to the uncertainties associated Moreover, farmers generally lack the awareness of with the resettlement, the location selection and con- legal property rights and the need to defend them struction for the resettlement housing lag far behind from violation (Qian and Xue 2017), leading to local the demolishing of the village. With only 9 months of government’s property rights abuse. rent compensation, the villagers are distressed about Escobar (2004, p. 47) maintained that ‘violence is their future (Chen 2020). Villagers’ resistance also not only endemic but constitutive of development’ stems from their own sense of powerlessness in face and is closely associated with the development of resettlement projects. The policy discourse is so INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF URBAN SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT 503 powerful that villagers have to comply with it. of Statistics of China 2019). The 17% gap represents Moreover, the local officials often employ both ‘hard’ those who live temporarily in cities without urban and ‘soft’ tactics to persuade villagers, which leaves no hukou status. In this sense, the existing hukou reform alternative options for villagers (Lv 2020). The forceful did not lead to a promising prospect, and the hukou resettlement projects have sparked intensive and system is deemed as an outdated policy that severely extensive discussions online in China. On obstructs the transition of rural residents to urban 17 June 2020, the Shandong Provincial Government residents (Chan 2010). The geographical attribute of held a press conference to respond to the ongoing hukou status further obscures the effect of the hukou village consolidations. The secretary of Shandong reform. In recent years, megacities in China such as Provincial Department of Natural Resources made it Beijing and Shanghai have implemented strict city clear that ‘land consolidation project should be pre- entry criteria to determine the temporary residents’ mised on villagers’ willingness to do so, and the pro- eligibility to obtain the city’s hukou status. In contrast ject can only be implemented after 95% of them to such stringent regulations, small and mid-size cities agree.’ The secretary also promised that land consoli- in China are constantly relaxing their requirements for dation will not be a one-size for all project and shall newcomers. The regional disparity of the hukou sys- never impose burdens on local villagers (The Paper tem raises the importance of the urban locality of 2020). On 29 June 2020, Shandong Binzhou City hukou registration (Wu and Zhang 2018). Therefore, Discipline Inspection Commission informed the public the hukou system in flux has prevented rural migrants about the discipline for the local officials (Guancha from purchasing permanent housing in urban areas, 2020). With the stepping down of local officials and rendering them the nomadic population. the cease of the consolidation projects, the attention Unlike rural migrant workers who are excluded on the controversial involuntary resettlement was from urban hukou due to voluntary migration, land- gradually subsided. Although Shandong’s case less farmers who are resettled to the city are instead shows how involuntary resettlement can be in China, compensated for the entitlement to urban nonagri- the promotion of rural to urban resettlement in other cultural hukou status (Qian 2019). According to Chan regions can be much smoother, such as Zhejiang . (2012), hukou reclassification contributed much to the While less heed has been paid to violence and con- recent urban population explosion. The hukou reclas- frontation relating to land expropriation in recent sification directly results from urban expansion and literature, we should be cautious about the uneven nationwide policy to abolish the dualist hukou system geography of Chinese cities in postulating the facts that distinguishes ‘agricultural’ and ‘nonagricultural.’ about resettlement-related conflicts. Most of the hukou converters are land-lost farmers The most widely acknowledged barrier for landless whose rural land was located in the peripheral urban farmers’ transition to urbanites is the hukou system. areas. Despite being granted the urban hukou status, Studies on hukou’s role in China’s rural-urban migra- the landless farmers are far from being treated as tion process are well documented (Chan and Zhang urban residents equally. As Qian (2019) argued, the 1999; Zhu 2007; Zhang and Wang 2010; Chen and Fan landless farmers are beset with socio-economic and 2016), and it is also acknowledged that the migration social-psychological barriers rooted in the longstand- is often ascribed to the forced displacement and land ing urban-rural divide. In addition, institutions of the grabbing (Levien 2012; Siciliano 2014). The hukou ruptured urban-rural relation have adversely system served as a rigid labour mobility control in impacted other formal institutions, such as ‘education, China, and it was not until 1998, the Ministry of employment, health care, public housing, social wel- Public Security authorised rural people’s free entry fare, and other public redistribution systems’ (Qian into cities (Cai 2011). This mobility increase has cata- and Xue 2017, p. 153). Such entrenched institutional lysed the influx of rural populations to participate in arrangements have further excluded landless farmers urban secondary and tertiary sectors, thereby signifi - from participating in urban market competitions cantly boosting urbanisation. However, some criticise fairly. Furthermore, they are not always granted full this pseudo-urbanisation for distorting the facts (Chan entitlements of social and economic welfares. While 2012). While the urbanisation rate based on residence prior literature has suggested that hukou has been status is around 60% in 2018, the household registra- a systematic barrier for rural residents’ integration into tion rate remained at around 43.37% (National Bureau urban society, the hukou system’s deregulation has 504 C. YANG AND Z. QIAN revealed that the longstanding urban-rural divide is enhance our understanding of urban resettlement, much problematic. namely social mismatch, space mismatch, and spatial In recent years, with the promotion of hukou mismatch. The social mismatch refers to the creative reform since the 1980s, another paradoxical phenom- destruction of social relations and networks of the enon arises where rural residents tend to decline the resettled villagers where capitalist social relations attainment of urban hukou despite the superiority based on exchange value have pervaded and domi- over rural hukou. Chen and Fan (2016) concluded nated the social (re)production of the affected that the primary concern for farmers is the loss of through resettlement. The space mismatch is alluded land rights and the diminishing value of the urban to that the top-down planned and produced concen- hukou, specifically in small and medium-sized cities. trated resettlement communities (CRCs) do not As mentioned in the previous section, the central match the spatial practices of the former villages. government has shifted much of its role of providing The spatial mismatch points to the changing pattern social welfare to the free market, so the institutional of general mobility and jobs-housing mobility of the arrangements change accordingly, significantly redu- landless villagers. It is worth noting that these three cing the entitlements associated with urban hukou predicaments facing the affected can be alleviated status. To that end, farmers seek to guarantee their over time given proper planning interventions and rights in the expropriation process by demonstrating villagers’ agency to make changes. a state of reluctance (Chen et al. 2017) or building The massive scale of displacement in China often ‘skeleton housing’ (Cao et al. 2018). The results of this couples with governments’ development of resettle- game between farmers and local government define ment neighbourhoods, which aims to restore the lives the stance of farmers: being involuntary or voluntary. of those affected. The resettlement community is In addition, Kan (2019) conceptualised a novel mode a performance project by ‘local growth coalitions’ of ‘accumulation without dispossession’ as an alter- (Qian 2007a), which is initiated by the local authority native for rural residents to deal with forced resettle- but developed by real estate developers who are in ment induced by land expropriation. In this mode, collation with the government through contracts. rural residents could participate in the land commo- Given the financial and time budget, the displaced dification process through the formation of rural- are relocated to top-down designed and central urban alliances based on ‘mechanisms of speculative planned gated communities, consisting of mid-rise rentiership.’ Instead of being resettled, villagers can and high-rise apartment buildings (Yip 2012). reserve a proportion of their land to avoid deterritor- Commentators portray this displacement as ‘involun- ialisation. Therefore, for those landless farmers, tary urbanization’ (Chen et al. 2016), which denotes hukou’s role, especially the rural hukou status has the passive transition both socially and spatially. As progressively shifted from the barrier to an asset Cernea (1997) had long ago reminded us, resettle- that can be exchanged for urban entitlements and ment and displacement often disrupt social networks safeguard their post-resettlement living. and community bonds, which is difficult to restore and rehabilitate in new communities. Hsing (2010) contended that peasants’ land loss and relocation is Post-resettlement living in the concentrated substantially a deterritorialisation process, which cre- resettlement community ates ruptures of their former collective identity and The previous sections shed light on the situations solidarity. The dismantlement of the ‘local state’ before and during the urban resettlement, whereas expels peasants from their land with barely limited this section delves into post-resettlement adaptation. compensation due to their limited access to govern- An expansive and burgeoning body of literature has mental mechanisms to bargain for compensations. attempted to unveil landless farmers’ post- With no land, job and social security, the voluntary resettlement adaptation to their host societies in displaced villagers are becoming ‘three-no farmers’, China (Xie et al. 2014; Li et al. 2016; Qian 2017; which reflects the capital shift process under neoliber- Zhang et al. 2018), but many, if not all, adopted the alism, echoing the widely acknowledged notion of case study approach hence limited to partial interpre- ‘accumulation by dispossession’ (Harvey 2005b). tation to the holistic picture. In this sense, we propose Capitalist social relations in host urban societies three identified themes based on the literature to often render some resources invisible, such as cultural INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF URBAN SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT 505 assets, sense of place, social networks and sociocul- space, and the representational spaces (Watkins tural livelihood practices (Gomersall 2018). The prior 2005; Prigge 2008; Schmid 2008). In conceptualising literature has paid much attention to the social the production of CRCs, the three moments can be dimension of resettlement community, exploring concretised and perceived as the rural society living, their role in consolidating territorialisation and neigh- top-down and technocratic design of resettlement bourhood identity (Blandy and Lister 2005), serving as community, and the bottom-up efforts in reshaping a transitional neighbourhood for rural-urban migrants spaces. The concentrated, gated, and urban-oriented (Liu et al. 2010a), reshaping the social relations of spatial arrangements of CRCs is produced through resettled rural residents (Zhang et al. 2017), and facil- a state-dominated course (Ye et al. 2014) thus in itating the regulation of the resettled (Cséfalvay and many cases do not take into account landless villa- Webster 2012). Recently, many scholars heed to the gers’ requirements for space. Against this backdrop, significance of villagers’ clan and kinship-based rela- landless farmers in China have spontaneously con- tions, arguing that such relations are conducive to ducted spatial reconstruction in resettlement commu- supporting landless farmers’ integration into urban nities to reconcile the conflicts between their social societies through economic, emotional, and socio- demands and the imposed planned spaces (Li et al. psychological aspects (Qian and Xue 2017; Wu et al. 2016; Zhao and Zou 2017; Wu et al. 2019; Zhang and 2019; Wang et al. 2020). These distinctive and domi- Qian 2020). Such informal practices are clear signs of nant social relations have a pronounced role in land- the resettled people’s aspiration to appropriate space lost villagers’ post-resettlement adaptation. For exam- (Schmid 2012; Shin 2013), although the community ple, Qian (2019) revealed that social capital resources management regulations prohibit them. These spon- could lead to investment outlets through which taneous grassroots behaviours can even lead to urban resettled villagers can properly use the lump-sum informality (Zhang et al. 2018). However, investigators monetary resettlement compensation in planning for should be mindful of the nuances of spatial practices their long-term livelihood. Wang et al. (2020) asserted in further employing this conceptualisation. For that kinship ties help mitigate landless farmers’ feel- instance, the spatial proximity of the resettled village ings of discrimination in the host community. In this to cities is a decisive factor in determining the spatial sense, while the creative destruction of landless farm- practice of the villagers. Qian and Xue (2017) reported ers’ social relations is inevitable, planning policies that the resettlement is less intense for those landless should at least facilitate a smooth transition, which villagers who have already adapted to urban living. In has been inadequately addressed in contemporary other words, the imposed urban style CRCs would be planning practices. less likely to trigger conflicts over space usage. In China, the top-down planned CRCs, while The existing literature only incidentally examines improving general living conditions, had normalised the spatiality of CRCs, but its implications on the land-lost farmers’ everyday practices through the con- mobility of the resettled villagers merit in-depth finement of physical containers of social activities examination. Since the advent of ‘the new mobilities (Zhao and Zou 2017; Zhang et al. 2018). Landless paradigm’ (Sheller and Urry 2006), the keyword of farmers find it hard to adapt to the physical environ- ‘mobility’ has dominated the discourses and interro- ment and spaces in CRCs that are designed exclusively gations that emerged from this field. The ‘mobility’ as for urban residents, ignoring farmers’ living customs an underlying conception has been widely applied in and residential culture (Li et al. 2016). Urban living studies, generative of informative works related to also brings substantial unexpected expenditures to transport geography, cultural geography, sociology, farmers, such as food expenses, apartment manage- migration studies, tourism studies and feminism, to ment fees, utility bills, and transportation costs (Zhao name a few (Adey et al. 2014). Scholars from diverse and Zou 2017; Weiping Liu et al. 2018). The space backgrounds have noted the imperative of introdu- mismatch between CRCs and landless villagers’ erst- cing mobility theory into the hotly debated area of while rural housing can be well deciphered by displaced villagers in China. In King’s (2012) important Lefebvre’s classic space production theory (Lefebvre commentary on migration studies, he pointed out 1991). Given (social) space is socially produced, the China’s case is a reminder to researchers not to production of space encompasses three constitutive neglect ‘internal migration’, which is as important as moments: spatial practice, the representation of the discourse around translocality (Greiner and 506 C. YANG AND Z. QIAN Sakdapolrak 2013), transnationality and diaspora planning policies to mitigate the spatial mismatch (Blunt 2007). In addition, the politics of mobility has problem from the planner’s perspective and high- rendered a world with unevenly distributed power of lights the importance of nonspatial factors of employ- exercising mobility. In this vein, mobility has been ment barriers in affecting the employment issue, such criticised not being as a notion of liberality but as as human capital social support and discrimination. ‘dysfunctional, inauthentic, and rootless’ representa- The spatial mismatch in Chinese cities demon- tions (Cresswell 2010). As such, the binary of mobility strates some discrepancies with American cities. One is at the crux of offering meaningful insights into of the most significant is that, while in American, a social phenomenon as a mobile one. In rebutting ‘spatial mismatch is mainly about residential centrali- Harvey’s ‘time-space compression’ (Harvey 1989b), sation of race-based neighbourhoods in employment- Massey (1993) used the notion of ‘power geometries’ decentralised metropolitan areas’ (Xu et al. 2014, p. 2), to express the core idea that mobility is socially differ - in China, the employment locations concentrate in entiated. In often cases, this disparity in mobility the city centre with low-income residents dispersed becomes the culprit of the spatial fixity or ‘forced in the suburb areas (Wang et al. 2011). Besides, the mobility’ (Hankins et al. 2014) of vulnerable groups. targeted population in American cases is focused on These insights rooted in mobility are constructive to ethnic minority groups; therefore, racial segregation our knowledge of urban resettlement and the invo- and discrimination are central to the discourse. luntarily displaced villagers in China (Gill et al. 2011). Empirical studies have shown that displaced residents The urban resettlement has imposed a capitalist often reside in urban fringe areas with some in proxi- social relation for landless farmers in host societies, mity to the original places of the displacement, irre- embodied by the changing work-residence nexus and spective of how the compensation is negotiated (Xu the reliance on mobility. The literature on the spatial and Chan 2011). This distinctive location choice arbi- mismatch phenomenon has much to offer in facilitat- trarily made by the government exerts profound ing our understanding of urban resettlement-induced impacts on the displaced villagers’ adaptation to the mobility change. This is a theme closely interrelated urban milieu. The ‘spatial barrier’ of the resettlement with residential mobility (Hankins et al. 2014; Coulter communities can also spawn other side effects such as et al. 2016; Scott et al. 2017) and employment mobility residential immobility and residential segregation (Liu (Cresswell et al. 2016). It is worth revisiting the reset- et al. 2010b), and the relations among these aspects tlement process here that the process while is osten- are under-examined in the current body of literature. sibly the relocation of people to new residential Moreover, the transition from ‘spatial match to ‘spatial places, but de facto the relocation of the labour force mismatch of the displaced villagers has been over- from rural to urban areas. In this light, the current looked in prior studies considering the expropriation practice of forced resettlement in China has resulted of farmland is accompanied by the deprivation of in problems concerning landless farmers’ integration landless farmers’ identity and occupation as ‘farmer.’ to urban employment, which impedes the sustainable In retrospect to the North American suburbanisation implementation and progression of China’s urbanisa- started in the 1960s, the current urbanisation in China tion. The spatial mismatch theory or spatial mismatch has catalysed a new wave of spatial-mismatch and hypothesis (SMH) was originally proposed by Kain spatial restructuring in urban China. (1968) to investigate the unemployment conundrum Moving from rural to urban areas has been tradi- facing Black workers who live in the downtown com- tionally viewed as an environmental change from munities but are distant from the employment oppor- immobility to mobility (Rau 2012), whereas it is not tunities due to suburbanisation. The research on the case in the face of China’s institutional legacy. spatial mismatch has expanded to investigating Additionally, while Chinese cities generally provide other groups of the underclass in the U.S., including high job accessibility because of high density, com- Latinos, low-income workers, single mothers, and plete public transit, and the absence of social segre- immigrants (Fan 2012). The theoretical assumptions gation, the recent urban expansion has resulted in of spatial mismatch help unravel the agglomeration of increasing concerns about the spatial mismatch, poverty and unemployment rate in American mega- which further exacerbates the social stability for the cities’ downtown area (Wilson 2012). A systematic lit- disadvantaged (Fan et al. 2014). Confronting this erature review by Fan (2012) classifies four groups of transformation, Chinese researchers have carried out INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF URBAN SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT 507 empirical studies based on SMH in major cities to the distinctiveness of urban resettlement in China’s draw attention from the government and make unique political-economic climate. This structured recommendations to formulate and implement plan- review outlines the ‘urban resettlement with Chinese ning policy (Li and Wu 2006; Meng and Fang 2007; Liu characteristics’ by probing three aspects of the pro- and Weng 2008). The applicability of SMH in China has cess. We first analysed China’s particular political- been proved by the extensive attention of scholars, economic context where neoliberalism, landed although the social and economic background in finance, and property rights institutions are heavily China is different. Further argued by Zhou et al. influenced by China’s socialist ideology and authori- (2013), the SMH with its principal aiming at ‘solving tarian regime. Against this backdrop, urban resettle- urban unemployment, alleviating traffic congestion, ment in China unfolds in a way that differs from its and filling the gap between the rich and the poor’ counterparts in the Western and Asian countries. We (p.1819) is competent to address urban spatial- then show that while landless villagers are faced with mismatch issues in China. In a neoliberal China, the hindrances of land expropriation, compensation, and market exchange has prevailed as the primary form of hukou restrictions, recent improvements in such social integration (Wu 2010). In this context, landless realms have blurred the dichotomy of voluntary and farmers’ employment opportunity is inherently cir- involuntary urbanites. On this account, the cumscribed by their low levels of education and tech- entrenched criticism on the social costs concomitant nical skill, which leads to either unemployment or with urban resettlement becomes untenable and war- employment in strenuous manual labour jobs for rants further critical examination. In addition, we pro- them, thereby being socially excluded (Zhao and pose three types of mismatch that are commonly seen Zou 2017). Thus far, the spatial mismatch phenom- in landless farmers’ post-resettlement adaptation. enon that links the resettlement community’s spatial While the social mismatch has been well documented dimension with the social dimension of displaced in existing literature, space mismatch and spatial mis- villagers’ employment has unveiled another distinc- match have been underexplored, particularly the lat- tive feature of urban resettlement in China. The three ter. As China’s overall urbanisation rate reaches a high types of mismatch of post-resettlement living indicate level, the imperative of urban-rural integration and an arduous adaptation process of landless farmers. the revitalisation of the countryside has become the However, existing literature reported an overall satis- foci point of policy reform (Zhu et al. 2019; Chen et al. faction of the resettled to the improved living envir- 2020; Gao et al. 2020), which pulls spotlight onto onment, amenities, public services, and social urban resettlement. connections (Chen et al. 2016). As such, the trade- Reflecting on our review, we recommend further offs between development and social costs of urban research should delve into the following aspects. resettlement need further and nuanced First off, the future trajectory of China’s urban investigations. resettlement hinges upon the distinctive land pol- itics that are rooted in China’s political-economic settings. The recent land reforms have prioritised Conclusion the longstanding ‘three rural issues’ to advocate for According to Kingsley Davis’s S-curve (Davis 1965), integrated rural-urban development (Gao et al. a fully urbanised country has an urbanisation ratio 2020). To this end, innovative policies such as somewhere between 75% and 85%. In this light, ‘three rights separation’ (Wang and Zhang 2017) China will transform itself into a fully urbanised region and ‘land coupon’ (Han and Lin 2019) have been in the next two decades, with the projected annual deployed to protect farmers’ rights over land and urbanisation growth at 1% (Chen et al. 2019). ensure their smooth adaptation to host cities. However, this macro statistical fact does not tell the Moreover, reforms have also aimed at achieving whole story. Urban resettlement as a specific form of equitable property rights for the peasantry (Cao urbanisation has contributed much to China’s objec- et al. 2020; Song et al. 2020; Wang and Tan tive of urban-rural integration by transforming land 2020). As such, the socialist neoliberal central and population from rural into urban. Its profound state and the entrepreneurial local government repercussion for sustainability cannot be fully unra- may change their roles in urban resettlement in velled without a systematic and tailored overview of the near future, adopting more humanistic 508 C. YANG AND Z. QIAN planning approaches. Researchers should also be adaptation in terms of employment and social inte- prudent and attentive to this top-down variation gration? Clues to resolving these questions are when reading superficial anomalies related to buried deep in our discourse of ‘urban resettle- urban resettlement in China. Second, while we ment with Chinese characteristics.’ briefly mentioned the uneven geography of It is not our intention to carry out a comprehensive Chinese cities, scholars have reminded us that the review on a wide-ranging paper. Instead, we seek to specifics of urban resettlement hinge largely upon present the defining and typical features of the revo- local cities’ economic, urbanisation, and political lutionary urban resettlement process in China and call conditions. Besides, small towns and cities are for the attention of global audiences with multidisci- becoming new destinations for rural residents plinary backgrounds. In an era of ‘planetary urbaniza- (Qian and Xue 2017; Zhu 2017; Qian 2017; Jian tion’ (Brenner and Schmid 2015), China’s case is et al. 2018). While megacities are locomotives for integral to a comprehensive conceptual framework China’s urbanisation, they are not ideal places for of urbanisation in the Anthropocene. While China’s peasants to settle. Knowledge regarding small radical urbanisation and great transformation in the cities and town urbanisation and accompanied urban-rural landscape are unlikely to be replicated in urban resettlement should be expanded. Third, other regions, the numerous lessons and informative the voluntary and involuntary dichotomy asso- messages are extremely insightful for the sustainable ciated with urban resettlement should be cau- development of humankind in the unpredictable tiously and critically adopted in future studies. As future. Wilmsen and Wang (2015) reminded us, ‘what is labelled voluntary may involve manipulation and Notes prior deprivation of the affected’ and ‘resettlement labelled involuntary can include elements of 1. On 25 February 2021, President Xi Jinping announced choice’ (p.643). In this sense, whether a certain China had lifted nearly 100 million people out of poverty resettlement project can be perceived of as volun- during his 8-year tenure. The income standard for extreme poverty is defined as annual income less than tary or involuntary is under hot debate. In most 4,000 RMB (around 615 USD). Xi said at the ceremony cases, the local residents may demonstrate varying that ‘All 98.99 million rural poor people have been lifted degrees of satisfaction towards the resettlement out of poverty under the current standards, all 832 poor project (Chen et al. 2016; Lo and Wang 2018), counties have been removed, all 128,000 poor villages which complicates the generalisation of post- have been listed.’ 2. In Brenner and Schmid’s formulation of planetary urba- resettlement appraisal. It is therefore essential to nisation, urbanisation unfolds through three constitutive adopt an exploratory approach in investigating moments: concentrated urbanisation, extended urbani- urban resettlement in China. Last, the changing sation, and differential urbanisation (Brenner and Schmid attitudes of the transitioning farmers need scrutiny 2015). In theory, extended urbanisation supports the from a comparative perspective. To wit, the radical concentrated urbanisation through constantly making operational landscape from the non-urban area; the dif- deregulation of hukou (Zhang et al. 2019) has bro- ferential urbanisation involves the creative destruction of ken down the binary wall for rural residents, socio-spatial configurations to produce new urban bestowing them with free mobility. While we con- potential. In this sense, capitalist development mode tend the displaced farmers’ mobility is hindered by always involves a reproduction of social relations and the concentrated community, compared to the political forms rather than solely production from an untouched territory. Following this conceptualisation, ‘floating population’ (Li 2006; Zhu 2007; Luo et al. resettlement can be conceived as a manifestation of 2018) who have no formal qualifications of residing ‘differential urbanization,’ shouldering the responsibility in cities, they are privileged in mobility to adapt to to reorganise spatial and physical configurations for the urban life. Therefore, in investigating new urbanites affected. derived from urban resettlement, researchers must 3. Rural revitalisation is a development strategy targeting rural areas. It was first proposed in the 19th Party adhere to a relative perspective. Specifically, Congress report in 2017. Some of the existing policies whether these new urbanites voluntary or involun- and regulations include China’s Strategic Plan for Rural tary? Whether the resettlement process hinder or Revitalisation (2018–2022), Opinions on Accelerating facilitate the landless villagers’ mobility? Whether Agricultural and Rural Modernisation by Comprehensively the changed mobility impact landless farmers’ Promoting Rural Revitalisation, and the most recent INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF URBAN SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT 509 Promotion Law of the People’s Republic of China on Rural in urban land-use reform and planning, urban morphology, and Revitalisation. urban form in Chinese cities. 4. Oftentimes, developers can be either state-owned or private enterprises. Both forms of developers collaborate with local government form the local growth coalition ORCID (Qian 2007a; Wu and Waley 2018; Du 2019). For instance, the developer Greentown China has established a long Chen Yang http://orcid.org/0000-0002-7609-3640 and stable relationship with Hangzhou municipality in developing resettlement communities since 2005. 5. Zhejiang is a coastal province in eastern China and has long been the pilot of China’s rural reforms. 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‘Resettlement with Chinese characteristics’: the distinctive political-economic context, (in)voluntary urbanites, and three types of mismatch

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10.1080/19463138.2021.1955364
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INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF URBAN SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT 2021, VOL. 13, NO. 3, 496–515 https://doi.org/10.1080/19463138.2021.1955364 ‘Resettlement with Chinese characteristics’: the distinctive political- economic context, (in)voluntary urbanites, and three types of mismatch Chen Yang and Zhu Qian School of Planning, University of Waterloo, Waterloo, ON, Canada ABSTRACT ARTICLE HISTORY Received 29 June 2020 In recent years, urban resettlement as a specific form of urbanisation has gained its Accepted 3 July 2021 momentum in planning practices to accommodate newcomers of cities, in line with the macro policy reforms of urban-rural integration. This paper synthesises literature KEYWORDS related to the proposed term ‘urban resettlement with Chinese characteristics’ to Urban resettlement; Chinese shed light on the distinctive and unparalleled socio-economic and spatial transforma- characteristics; landless tion entailed by the ongoing urban resettlement in China. Mindful of China’s socialist villagers; urban-rural ideology and authoritarian regime, we argue that urban resettlement has become development; mobility a potent tool for the Chinese government to fuel economic development and urbanisation. The longstanding issues such as involuntary resettlement have been alleviated with the gradualist institutional changes, but emerging predicaments concerning social mismatch, space mismatch, and spatial mismatch still linger. This paper calls for researchers to draw lessons and implications from the discourse of ‘urban resettlement with Chinese characteristics’ to expand the knowledge of sus- tainable urban-rural development. Introduction climate change. Early resettlement literature was writ- ten by anthropologists in the mid-fifties and early The year 2020 marks an iconic milestone for the sixties who studied dam-induced resettlement in Communist Party of China (CPC) and the Chinese African countries, such as Egypt and Ghana nation (zhonghua minzu) to achieve the comprehen- (Terminski 2015). The focal point gradually shifted sive establishment of ‘a moderately prosperous towards Asia because of the high population growth society’ in China’s long-range development strategic and rampant urbanisation process. Mega develop- plan. One year later, President Xi Jinping announced ment projects such as the Sardar Sarovar Dam in that China had scored a ‘completely victory’ in fight - India, transnational dam constructions alongside the ing against poverty. This long enduring process is Mekong River, and the well-known Three Gorges Dam achieved through China’s consistent efforts of institu- in China have frequently prompted concern (Neef and tional changes concerning the ‘three rural issues.’ Singer 2015). Similar to the adaptation of neoliberal- Resettlement has become a key tool in facilitating ism theory in China’s context (Lim 2014), urban reset- the development of the impoverished peasantry, tlement theory and praxis in China are by no means with some 9.6 million farmers are resettled during the same as explicated by the western literature the Thirteen Five-Year Plan (2016–2020) to alleviate (Connell 2012; Bonney 2013). Urban resettlement in poverty (Xinhua News Agency 2020). As Rogers and China has not been systematically examined yet due Wilmsen (2019) summarised, research on resettle- to its institutional (Tang et al. 2016), social (Zhang ment incorporates two strands of literature, focusing et al. 2017), and economic (Siciliano 2014) particula- on (1) resettlement as a vehicle for development and rities. Moreover, the political economy of socialist (2) resettlement as the resolution for adaptation to CONTACT Chen Yang c273yang@uwaterloo.ca School of Planning, University of Waterloo, 200 University Avenue West, Waterloo, ON, N2L 3G1, Canada © 2021 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF URBAN SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT 497 China has complicated resettlement, especially when ‘backwards’ or ‘lacking’ so as to justify the interven- it comes to the trade-offs between government inter- tion of resettlement development. The powerful state ventions and market economy laws. This paper aims dominance in China’s urbanisation has therefore to unveil the Chinese characteristics of urban resettle- become integral to resettlement planning, implemen- ment from three separate but entangled aspects, pay- tation, and appraisal (Xu et al. 2011; Ren 2017). This ing special attention to the changing political- paper further expands the existing knowledge of economic context, existing socio-economic and insti- urban resettlement in China through a lens of tutional barriers, and post-resettlement adaptation. In China’s gradualist and progressive manner of institu- the meanwhile, we dissect urban resettlement in tional adjustments to promoting urbanisation (Zhu China from the affected people’s perspective, under- 1999; Sofield and Li 2011). In the following sections, standing their rationality and agency in adapting to we first define the term ‘urban resettlement’ in this such resettlement practices. paper to distinguish urban resettlement from other During the last decades, after the marketisation of forms of resettlement projects, such as development- land in post-reform China, urbanisation has consumed induced and climate change-related resettlement. a massive amount of rural land (29,579 km as of Subsequently, we synthesise the literature on urban 2017). The land-driven economy is still the case in resettlement according to the three aspects men- China and will continue in the next couple of years tioned earlier. Given China’s longstanding efforts in (Lin 2014; Qun et al. 2015; Y. Liu et al. 2018). The balancing development and social stability, urban and capitalist urbanisation process has significantly homo- rural areas, this paper situates resettlement in the genised Chinese cities to a universal and general changing dynamics of China’s urban-rural develop- typology coupled with an increasingly urbanised ment. To be specific, how do China’s unique political- population (60% as of 2019). In megacities like economic settings influence the unfolding of urban Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, and Hangzhou, urban resettlement in China? How has urban resettlement resettlement prevails in their development and mod- evolved to facilitate landless farmers’ adaptation as ernisation process (Liu et al. 2016; Qiu and Xu 2017; urbanisation progresses in China? Lastly, what are the Ming Zhang and Wang 2013). The resettlement in major issues incurred by urban resettlement that hin- China is a complicated phenomenon manifested in der landless farmers’ adaptation to the host urban various forms, including the land dispossession during societies? We conclude by making suggestions on urban expansion, the redevelopment of urban vil- future research agendas to incorporate urban reset- lages, the regeneration of inner urban areas, and tlement in China as a critical aspect of achieving much intricated ‘sedentarisation of herding commu- a sustainable human settlement. nities’ (Rogers and Wilmsen 2019). This paper seeks to unpack how urban resettlement can be used by the The scope of ‘urban resettlement’ in China Chinese government to fuel its rapid urbanisation process and achieve integrated urban-rural develop- Resettlement is defined by the World Bank (2015) as ment (Wei et al. 2018). a process that involves assisted efforts to facilitate the Prior literature on urban resettlement in China has affected to ‘improve, or at least to restore, their focused on the agents of government and developers incomes and living standards.’ The phenomenon has (Gu and Wu 2010; Wei 2012; Cao et al. 2014), whereas garnered wide attention from scholars in the Global the resettled farmers’ agency to adapt to this imposed North, but the intellectual battlegrounds are primarily resettlement is underexamined. This is largely due to in the Global South (Neef and Singer 2015; Rogers and the assumption that resettlement generally results in Wilmsen 2019). International organisations like the the improvement of resettlers’ livelihood. Although World Bank and Asian Developmental Bank serve as some studies (Lo et al. 2016; Xiaojun et al. 2017; Wei; the main agents funding development projects, Liu et al. 2018) claim there is an increase in income for which are likely to result in migration, resettlement displaced people, some critiques highlight the reset- and displacement of the local residents. Since urbani- tlement’s adverse impact on the displaced people, sation has become a global condition (Brenner and especially the destruction of their social relations Schmid 2014), we hereby conceptualise resettlement (Gomersall 2018). As Sargeson (2013a) pointed out, as a specific form of urbanisation that entails the the resettled are pre-defined by the government as creative destruction of the siting community’s spatial, 498 C. YANG AND Z. QIAN 2 3 social, and economic arrangements. The enclosure of aiming at rural revitalisation. The most recent landscape in peri-urban and rural areas has acceler- attempt made by the central state to establish ated capital circulation at the cost of millions of rural a Common Wealth Demonstration Zone in Zhejiang residents, not only in the form of ‘accumulation by Province is a big milestone to realising the Marxist dispossession’ (Harvey 2008). objective of eliminating the urban-rural divide Resettlement in China comes in various forms: the (Xinhua News Agency 2021). As an important form widely practiced development induced displacement of urban-rural development, urban resettlement and resettlement, the resettlement as development needs in-depth exploration. targeting poverty alleviation in the countryside, intra- Urban resettlement is the direct consequence of urban resettlement resulting from urban redevelop- land finance in China. The large body of literature on ment projects, and urban resettlement of land-lost land finance has documented how China managed to farmers due to urban expansion and land expropria- achieve such high-speed growth within a regime tion (Wang and Lo 2015; Wu 2016b; Liu J 2017; Wei; where central government and local government are Liu et al. 2018). The last form is the main research in a win-win situation (Lin 2014; Liu et al. 2016b; object of this paper, which will be referred to by using Zhang and Wu 2017; Huang and Chan 2018). Against ‘urban resettlement.’ In China, urbanisation is defined this economic triumph, another body of literature on as ‘a complex and multifaceted process involving land expropriation pays heightened attention to the population migration from rural to urban areas, rural sufferings of land-lost farmers being deprived of their and urban land conversions, spatial reconfiguration of land and displaced from their original settlements settlements, and changing governance’ (Gu and Wu (Siciliano 2014; Lin et al. 2018; Xie 2019; Zhang and 2010, p. 1–2). We can easily peek from the definition Qian 2020; Kan 2020). The longstanding property that rural-urban dualism is the most substantial fea- rights ambiguity issue associated with China’s land ture that distinguishes China’s urban transformation ownership has further stigmatised urban resettlement from its international counterparts. This entrenched practices in China (Qian 2019; He et al. 2009; Zhang urban-rural divide has its historical and socio- et al. 2018). Urban resettlement, therefore, has economic roots in China’s long history as an agricul- remained a subordinated research subject compared tural country and the legacy of the National Party’s to urbanisation and the broad land issue in China. In ruling before the civil war. Facing the underdevelop- this sense, it is essential to foreground urban resettle- ment reality, the Communist Party of China employed ment to deepen our understanding of the changing an urban-biased development strategy to catch up urban-rural dynamics in China, particularly as an with developed Western countries in the post-reform emerging form of rural-urban population transfer. period (Wang et al. 2019). The household registration Indeed, Chan (2012) contented that hukou reclassifi - system (hukou zhidu) emerged in 1958 and has since cation, rather than net migration, was the primary become a defining identity of Chinese society, which contributor to the recent urban population explosion. bears the brunt of criticism during China’s social and The transition from rural residents to urban residents economic transformation. In post-reform China, the is an enduring process that involves the social inte- urban-rural relations have undergone intensive trans- gration of economic, social, and political dimensions, formations under the paradigm shifts of China’s urba- which has been extensively examined by Chinese nisation (Zhu et al. 2019). China’s socialist ideology scholars and is termed as ‘citizenization’ (Liu et al. demands an ultimate urban-rural integration rather 2012; Shan 2014; Feng and Ye 2017; Xu et al. 2019). than the urban-rural antagonism that is bound to In sum, urban resettlement in this paper is defined happen in capitalist development (Mili 2019). as a special form of urbanisation through which farm- Against this backdrop, the term ‘coordinated urban- ers transform into urbanites through the creative rural development’ was formalised by the written destruction of their socio-economic conditions. To provisions that came into being at the 16th Party our best knowledge, existing research on this form Congress in 2002. Later on, urban-rural integration of resettlement in China has mainly adopted case has become macro policy rhetoric and a national study approach (Hu et al. 2015; Qian and Xue 2017; priority of rural reforms and China’s subsequent Five- Wu et al. 2019; Xie 2019) partly due to the uneven Year Plans (11th, 12th, and 13th). In recent years, geography of Chinese cities (Li 2012; Chen et al. 2019). China has initiated a new round of policy reforms Therefore, this research lacuna calls for a systematic INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF URBAN SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT 499 and contextualised exposition of the subject. This ideology of neoliberalism (Wu 2008; Chu and So review aims to fill this gap by synthesising existing 2010). Furthermore, neoliberal planning that favours literature to forge a multi-layered but relatively fine- pro-growth and market-friendly state-market rela- grained understanding of urban resettlement in con- tions also demonstrates variations in China. China’s temporary China. authoritarian regime substantially differs from the neoliberal planning practices in North American and Western European countries (Wu and Phelps 2011), China’s distinctive political-economic context where the retreating state is actually gaining a more The political landscape of Asian countries, especially proactive role in introducing market mechanisms in China, has determined the development path of reset- planning. Wu (2015) asserted that China’s post-reform tlement projects. The state-dominated resettlement planning is featured by rescaling instead of retreat, reminds us of the protracted discourse of planned aiming at the market but also consolidating state economy versus market economy in China (Tang power. As such, neoliberal planning has been used 1994; Ma 2002; Qian 2014). Whether strong govern- by both central and local governments to fuel the ment interventions under socialism would lead to deregulated market-oriented growth. promising outcomes has yet to be seen. Indeed, the Against this socialist neoliberal backdrop, urban land institutions in place have been criticised for resettlement is tacitly sanctioned and even promoted being ‘wrong’ by scholars who uphold Western neo- by the Chinese state under the banner of planning for classic economics theories that private ownership growth and planning for the market. However, leads to better economic performance and prosperity although the state controls the allocation of land (Ho 2013; Webster et al. 2016). The gradual decentra- resources, China’s treatment of land related to reset- lisation and the deployment of market-driven urban tlement varies significantly from the ‘eminent domi- development under neoliberalism have profoundly nation’ in India and a pro-market process in socialist affected resettlement projects. While the hegemonic Vietnam (Phuc et al. 2014; Parwez and Sen 2016; Ren capitalist mode of production has penetrated China’s 2017). Chinese government exercise much regulatory urbanisation process (Chan 2012; Brenner and Schmid power over urban resettlement and land conversion. 2015), some pronounced socialist features character- In practice, while the developers sometimes partici- ise urban resettlement in China, including socialist pate in the resettlement project of land-lost farmers, neoliberalism, landed finance and the public owner- the local government makes ultimate decisions. ship of land. These three bodies of literature can Urban resettlement aligns with neoliberal principles enhance our understanding of urban resettlement in that favour property market and suburbanisation and China’s distinctive political-economic context. caters to the central government’s pursuit of urban- First, neoliberalism has unfolded in China in a way rural integrated development and local government’s that follows the ‘authoritarian turn’ of neoliberalism fiscal demands. It creates an overall promising pro- (Peck and Theodore 2019) that features ‘more unilat- spect except for the land-lost farmers in some cases, eral actions of authoritarian states than democratic which will be examined in-depth in subsequent consent to impose neoliberal practices’ (Su and Qian sections. 2020, p. 3). The proliferation of literature on China’s Second, the landed finance is a phenomenon rela- neoliberalism and the entrepreneurial government tively unique to China. Land commodification and has clearly revealed the political-economic backdrop land financialization in China add knowledge about of China’s unprecedented urbanisation. The urbanisa- the role of land in urban growth and development. tion parallels the displacement of people and pea- For the former, Lin (2014) pointed out that land sants from their settlements to be resettled commodification rather than human capital and elsewhere in usually concentrated and gated urban advanced technology that are main contributors to communities (Zhao and Zou 2017). A consensus has Western urbanisation played an instrumental role in been made that the process of neoliberalisation in China; for the latter, Liu et al. (2016) concluded that China is inscribed with strong ‘Chinese contra to Western countries where suburbanisation Characteristics’ (Harvey 2005a; Ong 2007; Peck and results from the capital switch from the primary Zhang 2013), and China’s post-reform market econ- circuit to the secondary circuit, China’s capital accu- omy boom is undeniably attributed to the hegemonic mulation is facilitated by land-reserve and financing 500 C. YANG AND Z. QIAN systems that local governments deliberately orches- Third, China’s ambiguous property rights institu- trate. As we argued before, China’s neoliberalism tion is relatively credible and effective in the current unfolding does not lead to a wholesale retreat of stage (Ho 2014, 2016; Sun and Ho 2020). An extensive the state, but reinforces the state’s governance, literature stresses that clearly defined private property especially for the local governments. What becomes rights are the prerequisite for economic development unique for China is that instead of following the (Deininger et al. 2015; Sun 2016; Ho 2017). However, orthodox neoliberalism framework of the diminish- in China’s authoritarian management of production ing and minimum state at this stage, it diverts to elements, the land is either collective-owned or state- another form of re-orientation, from ‘redistributive owned. The enigma that has long plagued scholars is state’ to the ‘entrepreneurial state(s)’ (Wu 2008). Wu that China’s economic boom is rooted in ‘wrong insti- (2010) further addressed that the ruthless commodi- tutions,’ including ‘authoritarian, non-transparent, fication and privatisation process undermine Chinese unclear, ambiguous and insecure’ (Ho 2013, p. 1088). social stability after Deng Xiaoping’s southern tour in While China’s property rights ambiguity has been 1992, which led to extensive lay-offs as a new under- explicated through various perspectives (Zhang and class and the suspension of social housing provision, He 2020; Zheng and Ho 2020; Cai et al. 2020; Wang contributing to the development of entrepreneurial and Tan 2020), we seek further to explore this topic governance. from the perspective of urban resettlement. We iden- The paradox in this shift is while the theory of tify that: 1) the local predatory government takes neoliberalism advocates the minimisation of state’ advantage of this ambiguity to advance urban reset- intervention to the free market (Harvey 2005a, p. 2), in tlement, 2) the central government is promoting gra- the authoritarian regime like China, the disempower- dualist institutional changes to achieving equitable ment of central state de facto reinforces the ‘sover- property rights, and 3) collective ownership of rural eignty’ (Hsing 2010) of the local states with more land can be conducive to landless farmers’ post- autonomy (Harvey 1989a, p. 14) on devising the land resettlement adaptation. economy to adapt to the neoliberal urbanisation. This Qian (2007; 2017; 2019) argues that the local gov- argument aligns with many scholar’s observations that ernment uses coercive measures such as land expro- notwithstanding resembling neoliberalism to some priation to appropriate the rural land from rural extent, China’s land commodification is primarily led collectives justified by ‘public interests’ to generate by the party-state rather than the capitalist class (Ong profits. In such practices, property rights ambiguity 2007; Wu 2016b; Horesh and Lim 2017). Furthermore, reinforces the power imbalance among actors of He and Wu (2009) highlighted the importance of land local government, rural collective and siting farmers, and housing reform in the late 1990s in facilitating the which further exacerbates the unfair redistribution. neoliberal shifts of China from an egalitarian society to The land system in China went through a marketised society. Besides, they claim that a new a privatisation-socialisation-marketisation process, nexus of governance has emerged wherein the local and the institutional setting also evolved accordingly state is more proactive in the practice of neoliberal (Qiu and Xu 2017). China’s central government has urbanism within the framework devised by the central proactively engaged in institutional changes as government. The defining feature of land commodifi - a top-down effort in recalibrating the existing dys- cation is anchored with China’s neoliberal urbanism, functional system (Lin 1989; North 1990). Liu et al. which is controlled by China’s authoritarian govern- (2019) conceptualised this fluid state as ‘property ment intervention (Ong 2007). This prevailing land con- rights regimes in transition’, which involves reassign- sumption directly leads to the encroachment of rural ing ‘operational level rights’ to reach a new balance lands surrounding the existing urban boundary, among actors involved. In 2020, the revised Land thereby creating landless farmers and fierce collisions Administration Law standardised the legitimised responding to the land grabbing (Lin 2010). Therefore, rural land transactions. Specifically, it seeks to safe- the resultant resettlement is not produced solely by guard farmers’ rights and interests by clarifying land market-driven spatial enclosure but is contributed property rights and the vague formulation of ‘public much by the local entrepreneurial government’s delib- interests’ (Wen et al. 2020). Furthermore, recent stu- erate embracement of ‘spatial fix’ to attract and absorb dies have suggested that collective land ownership capital investment. can enhance farmers’ bargaining power against local INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF URBAN SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT 501 government and provide a reliable source of income Literature has documented much about the social for land-lost farmers (Sargeson 2013; Qian 2015). In instability inflicted by land expropriation in China, Hangzhou, the local government leaves rural collec- including impoverishment, violence, and social segre- tive a certain percentage (often 10%) of the land gation (Sargeson 2013; Vanclay 2017; Zhang and Qian expropriated. The retained land is then converted 2020). Land expropriation, or domestic land grabbing to urban construction land and can be used for (Siciliano 2014), involves the transformation of collec- market purposes, which realises the hidden market tive-owned rural land to urban land for market pur- value of the rural land. In the long run, the retained poses and the resettlement of landless farmers. collective land can provide sustainable economic According to China’s Land Administration Law, those benefits as well as employment opportunities for farmers are entitled to a compensation package that the resettled villagers, facilitating their adaptation facilitates their post-resettlement adaptation. to urban societies. In addition, the property Nevertheless, this package does not guarantee a fair exchange has become a primary form of compensa- monetary compensation based on land’s market value tion for landless farmers during resettlement (Hu since the scheme is designed mainly according to the et al. 2015), which provides another outlet for prop- original use of agricultural production. The exclusion erty rights reform. of rural collectives and individuals from the decision- The shocking magnitude of near 250 million dis- making process has been criticised for many potential placed peasants in China by 2025 (Johnson 2013) reasons: shortcomings in governance, institutional alarms urban scholars to seriously interrogate the deficiencies, speculative behaviours of local actors, phenomenon and the drivers that fuel the great trans- and property rights ambiguity (Qian 2015; Tang et al. formation. In the socialist neoliberal political- 2015). Over time, extensive literature has developed economic context, China’s urbanisation unfolds in on two contentious aspects of China’s urban develop- a balanced manner that combines state control over ment, including the negotiation of compensation (Tao land and market-driven capital circulation. In light of and Xu 2007; Hui et al. 2013; Wang et al. 2017) and this, urban resettlement has become a potent tool in violent confrontations (Escobar 2004; Chen et al. 2013; planning for growth, market, entrepreneurial govern- Sargeson 2013). Facing the abrupt and involuntary ance, equitable property rights, and urban-rural inte- displacement, peasants have to grasp the compensa- gration. On a macro level, urban resettlement and tion package as the last straw from the government. urbanisation in China have been successful with pro- The compensation package generally comes in three mising statistics, but whether it improves landless forms:1) compensation for the original land, 2) allow- farmer’s livelihood and welfare warrants further ance for the resettled, and 3) compensation for unhar- investigation. vested crops (Lin and Ho 2005). In a recent review, Qian (2015) reported that land requisition compensa- tion has gradually improved in many aspects in recent Voluntary or involuntary Urbanites years, generating a more sophisticated hybrid Building on the contextual setting outlined in the approach that encompasses monetary compensation, previous section, this section covers more literature employment alternatives, and others. However, Wang on how urban resettlement has changed over the et al. (2017) pointed out that compensation is often years. We seek to explore whether urban resettlement unevenly distributed, with large rooms of negotiation is a voluntary or involuntary process by delving into at the locale. three bodies of literature on land expropriation, com- On the one hand, the negotiation opens the win- pensation, and the hukou system. Wilmsen and Wang dow for displaced villagers to claim more monetary (2015) claimed that voluntary and involuntary reset- rewards from their land expropriation; on the other, tlement is a false dichotomy in China since the two given the power relations within the village, the may transform to each other, thus resettlement masses are likely to gain lower compensation com- should be based on ‘a commitment to settlement pared to those who have social connections with not just resettlement’ (p.612). While this argument is village cadres or dominant clan. While the situation valid in its own right, this section focuses on whether has drawn attention from the central government, the the changing conditions of urban resettlement have existing legislative policy lags behind the rampant eased landless farmers’ transition to urbanities. land acquisition in place, which inevitably 502 C. YANG AND Z. QIAN compromises the compensation (Hui et al. 2013). It is process under the banner of modernisation, specifi - worth noting that compensation schemes should not cally with displacement. The forceful land expropria- be viewed homogeneously. To wit, compensation tion violates the fundamental security of peasants standards in developed coastal areas differ substan- without further accommodations for their adaptation tially from those of western regions. This spatial het- to the new urban environment through erogeneity complicates the perception of land a participatory process. Building on Escobar’s compensation associated with resettlement. For research, Sargeson (2013) proposed the notion of those who receive a large lump-sum monetary com- ‘violence as development’ to further explain the pensation, conspicuous consumption behaviour expropriation violence, calling for attention to ‘peo- becomes problematic (Bao et al. 2017). The transition ple’s participation in political-economic processes’ from inadequate compensation to over- (p.1081). Notably, the violence and the protest are compensation in some parts of China has critically mainly against the local government (township), challenged our traditional conception that enough which, in So’s (2007) view, is ascribed to the neoliberal compensation brings harmonious post-resettlement bifurcated state with a ‘benign’ centre and social adaptation. For instance, the term ‘chai erdai’ a ‘predatory’ local apparatus juxtaposed in post- (literally meaning the second generation of resettle- reform China. This assertion is evident in recent ment households) has gained wide attention in ‘hecun bingju’ (village consolidation) in Shandong Chinese academia. Province where local villagers were forcibly displaced Accompanying the compensation are sometimes and inadequately compensated. Although the Rural petitions, protests, and violent confrontations. Zhong Revitalisation Strategic Plan (2018–2022) clearly states et al. (2010) noted that China is known for its massive that ‘farmers shall not be forcibly relocated and con- land-use change and surge in land conflicts. The pro- centrated in apartments,’ the contentious resettle- portion of land expropriation accounts for 73.2% of ment in Shandong Province has clearly violated this Chinese farmers’ petitions concerning land issues (Lin rule. et al. 2018). The aforementioned property rights ambi- In Shandong’s case, while the village consolidation guity has intensified the conflict about land expropria- intends to deal with the ‘hollowing villages’ (Zhao and tion. Sargeson (2013) argued that in China, Zhang 2017) and improve rural land-use efficiency, ‘expropriation violence is an expression of popular the misconducts of local governments during the demand for real property rights in the land’ (p.1073). implementation renders the resettlement proble- Since property rights conversion is an integral part of matic for rural villages. For example, different from land development (Huang and Chan 2018), local gov- other ‘hollowing villages,’ there is a large population ernments use economic incentives and political of young adults in Xiaofan village, who still inhabit repressions to propel the process. In the face of the there and are engaged in agricultural production. forced resettlement, the rural collective and indivi- Local villagers’ primary concerns about the upstairs duals are often passive recipients given the uncertain lifestyle include: no place to park farm equipment property rights and weak collective organisation such as tractors, the expenses burden of utilities and structures (Yan et al. 2018). Lack of property rights maintenance fees, and the employment loss. In addi- leads to the denial of China’s landless farmers’ right to tion, the compensation offered cannot even meet the the city (Harvey, 2003). While Sargeson (2013) found construction cost of the new apartments, which a political maturation of villagers to resist expropria- requires the villagers to pay additional money for tion through protests and activist mobilisation, such the difference. The difference can reach more than movements are limited to claims for rights to subsis- 100,000 yuan, which is a huge burden for the peasan- tence (Shin 2013) and fair compensations (Ren 2017). try. Worse still, due to the uncertainties associated Moreover, farmers generally lack the awareness of with the resettlement, the location selection and con- legal property rights and the need to defend them struction for the resettlement housing lag far behind from violation (Qian and Xue 2017), leading to local the demolishing of the village. With only 9 months of government’s property rights abuse. rent compensation, the villagers are distressed about Escobar (2004, p. 47) maintained that ‘violence is their future (Chen 2020). Villagers’ resistance also not only endemic but constitutive of development’ stems from their own sense of powerlessness in face and is closely associated with the development of resettlement projects. The policy discourse is so INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF URBAN SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT 503 powerful that villagers have to comply with it. of Statistics of China 2019). The 17% gap represents Moreover, the local officials often employ both ‘hard’ those who live temporarily in cities without urban and ‘soft’ tactics to persuade villagers, which leaves no hukou status. In this sense, the existing hukou reform alternative options for villagers (Lv 2020). The forceful did not lead to a promising prospect, and the hukou resettlement projects have sparked intensive and system is deemed as an outdated policy that severely extensive discussions online in China. On obstructs the transition of rural residents to urban 17 June 2020, the Shandong Provincial Government residents (Chan 2010). The geographical attribute of held a press conference to respond to the ongoing hukou status further obscures the effect of the hukou village consolidations. The secretary of Shandong reform. In recent years, megacities in China such as Provincial Department of Natural Resources made it Beijing and Shanghai have implemented strict city clear that ‘land consolidation project should be pre- entry criteria to determine the temporary residents’ mised on villagers’ willingness to do so, and the pro- eligibility to obtain the city’s hukou status. In contrast ject can only be implemented after 95% of them to such stringent regulations, small and mid-size cities agree.’ The secretary also promised that land consoli- in China are constantly relaxing their requirements for dation will not be a one-size for all project and shall newcomers. The regional disparity of the hukou sys- never impose burdens on local villagers (The Paper tem raises the importance of the urban locality of 2020). On 29 June 2020, Shandong Binzhou City hukou registration (Wu and Zhang 2018). Therefore, Discipline Inspection Commission informed the public the hukou system in flux has prevented rural migrants about the discipline for the local officials (Guancha from purchasing permanent housing in urban areas, 2020). With the stepping down of local officials and rendering them the nomadic population. the cease of the consolidation projects, the attention Unlike rural migrant workers who are excluded on the controversial involuntary resettlement was from urban hukou due to voluntary migration, land- gradually subsided. Although Shandong’s case less farmers who are resettled to the city are instead shows how involuntary resettlement can be in China, compensated for the entitlement to urban nonagri- the promotion of rural to urban resettlement in other cultural hukou status (Qian 2019). According to Chan regions can be much smoother, such as Zhejiang . (2012), hukou reclassification contributed much to the While less heed has been paid to violence and con- recent urban population explosion. The hukou reclas- frontation relating to land expropriation in recent sification directly results from urban expansion and literature, we should be cautious about the uneven nationwide policy to abolish the dualist hukou system geography of Chinese cities in postulating the facts that distinguishes ‘agricultural’ and ‘nonagricultural.’ about resettlement-related conflicts. Most of the hukou converters are land-lost farmers The most widely acknowledged barrier for landless whose rural land was located in the peripheral urban farmers’ transition to urbanites is the hukou system. areas. Despite being granted the urban hukou status, Studies on hukou’s role in China’s rural-urban migra- the landless farmers are far from being treated as tion process are well documented (Chan and Zhang urban residents equally. As Qian (2019) argued, the 1999; Zhu 2007; Zhang and Wang 2010; Chen and Fan landless farmers are beset with socio-economic and 2016), and it is also acknowledged that the migration social-psychological barriers rooted in the longstand- is often ascribed to the forced displacement and land ing urban-rural divide. In addition, institutions of the grabbing (Levien 2012; Siciliano 2014). The hukou ruptured urban-rural relation have adversely system served as a rigid labour mobility control in impacted other formal institutions, such as ‘education, China, and it was not until 1998, the Ministry of employment, health care, public housing, social wel- Public Security authorised rural people’s free entry fare, and other public redistribution systems’ (Qian into cities (Cai 2011). This mobility increase has cata- and Xue 2017, p. 153). Such entrenched institutional lysed the influx of rural populations to participate in arrangements have further excluded landless farmers urban secondary and tertiary sectors, thereby signifi - from participating in urban market competitions cantly boosting urbanisation. However, some criticise fairly. Furthermore, they are not always granted full this pseudo-urbanisation for distorting the facts (Chan entitlements of social and economic welfares. While 2012). While the urbanisation rate based on residence prior literature has suggested that hukou has been status is around 60% in 2018, the household registra- a systematic barrier for rural residents’ integration into tion rate remained at around 43.37% (National Bureau urban society, the hukou system’s deregulation has 504 C. YANG AND Z. QIAN revealed that the longstanding urban-rural divide is enhance our understanding of urban resettlement, much problematic. namely social mismatch, space mismatch, and spatial In recent years, with the promotion of hukou mismatch. The social mismatch refers to the creative reform since the 1980s, another paradoxical phenom- destruction of social relations and networks of the enon arises where rural residents tend to decline the resettled villagers where capitalist social relations attainment of urban hukou despite the superiority based on exchange value have pervaded and domi- over rural hukou. Chen and Fan (2016) concluded nated the social (re)production of the affected that the primary concern for farmers is the loss of through resettlement. The space mismatch is alluded land rights and the diminishing value of the urban to that the top-down planned and produced concen- hukou, specifically in small and medium-sized cities. trated resettlement communities (CRCs) do not As mentioned in the previous section, the central match the spatial practices of the former villages. government has shifted much of its role of providing The spatial mismatch points to the changing pattern social welfare to the free market, so the institutional of general mobility and jobs-housing mobility of the arrangements change accordingly, significantly redu- landless villagers. It is worth noting that these three cing the entitlements associated with urban hukou predicaments facing the affected can be alleviated status. To that end, farmers seek to guarantee their over time given proper planning interventions and rights in the expropriation process by demonstrating villagers’ agency to make changes. a state of reluctance (Chen et al. 2017) or building The massive scale of displacement in China often ‘skeleton housing’ (Cao et al. 2018). The results of this couples with governments’ development of resettle- game between farmers and local government define ment neighbourhoods, which aims to restore the lives the stance of farmers: being involuntary or voluntary. of those affected. The resettlement community is In addition, Kan (2019) conceptualised a novel mode a performance project by ‘local growth coalitions’ of ‘accumulation without dispossession’ as an alter- (Qian 2007a), which is initiated by the local authority native for rural residents to deal with forced resettle- but developed by real estate developers who are in ment induced by land expropriation. In this mode, collation with the government through contracts. rural residents could participate in the land commo- Given the financial and time budget, the displaced dification process through the formation of rural- are relocated to top-down designed and central urban alliances based on ‘mechanisms of speculative planned gated communities, consisting of mid-rise rentiership.’ Instead of being resettled, villagers can and high-rise apartment buildings (Yip 2012). reserve a proportion of their land to avoid deterritor- Commentators portray this displacement as ‘involun- ialisation. Therefore, for those landless farmers, tary urbanization’ (Chen et al. 2016), which denotes hukou’s role, especially the rural hukou status has the passive transition both socially and spatially. As progressively shifted from the barrier to an asset Cernea (1997) had long ago reminded us, resettle- that can be exchanged for urban entitlements and ment and displacement often disrupt social networks safeguard their post-resettlement living. and community bonds, which is difficult to restore and rehabilitate in new communities. Hsing (2010) contended that peasants’ land loss and relocation is Post-resettlement living in the concentrated substantially a deterritorialisation process, which cre- resettlement community ates ruptures of their former collective identity and The previous sections shed light on the situations solidarity. The dismantlement of the ‘local state’ before and during the urban resettlement, whereas expels peasants from their land with barely limited this section delves into post-resettlement adaptation. compensation due to their limited access to govern- An expansive and burgeoning body of literature has mental mechanisms to bargain for compensations. attempted to unveil landless farmers’ post- With no land, job and social security, the voluntary resettlement adaptation to their host societies in displaced villagers are becoming ‘three-no farmers’, China (Xie et al. 2014; Li et al. 2016; Qian 2017; which reflects the capital shift process under neoliber- Zhang et al. 2018), but many, if not all, adopted the alism, echoing the widely acknowledged notion of case study approach hence limited to partial interpre- ‘accumulation by dispossession’ (Harvey 2005b). tation to the holistic picture. In this sense, we propose Capitalist social relations in host urban societies three identified themes based on the literature to often render some resources invisible, such as cultural INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF URBAN SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT 505 assets, sense of place, social networks and sociocul- space, and the representational spaces (Watkins tural livelihood practices (Gomersall 2018). The prior 2005; Prigge 2008; Schmid 2008). In conceptualising literature has paid much attention to the social the production of CRCs, the three moments can be dimension of resettlement community, exploring concretised and perceived as the rural society living, their role in consolidating territorialisation and neigh- top-down and technocratic design of resettlement bourhood identity (Blandy and Lister 2005), serving as community, and the bottom-up efforts in reshaping a transitional neighbourhood for rural-urban migrants spaces. The concentrated, gated, and urban-oriented (Liu et al. 2010a), reshaping the social relations of spatial arrangements of CRCs is produced through resettled rural residents (Zhang et al. 2017), and facil- a state-dominated course (Ye et al. 2014) thus in itating the regulation of the resettled (Cséfalvay and many cases do not take into account landless villa- Webster 2012). Recently, many scholars heed to the gers’ requirements for space. Against this backdrop, significance of villagers’ clan and kinship-based rela- landless farmers in China have spontaneously con- tions, arguing that such relations are conducive to ducted spatial reconstruction in resettlement commu- supporting landless farmers’ integration into urban nities to reconcile the conflicts between their social societies through economic, emotional, and socio- demands and the imposed planned spaces (Li et al. psychological aspects (Qian and Xue 2017; Wu et al. 2016; Zhao and Zou 2017; Wu et al. 2019; Zhang and 2019; Wang et al. 2020). These distinctive and domi- Qian 2020). Such informal practices are clear signs of nant social relations have a pronounced role in land- the resettled people’s aspiration to appropriate space lost villagers’ post-resettlement adaptation. For exam- (Schmid 2012; Shin 2013), although the community ple, Qian (2019) revealed that social capital resources management regulations prohibit them. These spon- could lead to investment outlets through which taneous grassroots behaviours can even lead to urban resettled villagers can properly use the lump-sum informality (Zhang et al. 2018). However, investigators monetary resettlement compensation in planning for should be mindful of the nuances of spatial practices their long-term livelihood. Wang et al. (2020) asserted in further employing this conceptualisation. For that kinship ties help mitigate landless farmers’ feel- instance, the spatial proximity of the resettled village ings of discrimination in the host community. In this to cities is a decisive factor in determining the spatial sense, while the creative destruction of landless farm- practice of the villagers. Qian and Xue (2017) reported ers’ social relations is inevitable, planning policies that the resettlement is less intense for those landless should at least facilitate a smooth transition, which villagers who have already adapted to urban living. In has been inadequately addressed in contemporary other words, the imposed urban style CRCs would be planning practices. less likely to trigger conflicts over space usage. In China, the top-down planned CRCs, while The existing literature only incidentally examines improving general living conditions, had normalised the spatiality of CRCs, but its implications on the land-lost farmers’ everyday practices through the con- mobility of the resettled villagers merit in-depth finement of physical containers of social activities examination. Since the advent of ‘the new mobilities (Zhao and Zou 2017; Zhang et al. 2018). Landless paradigm’ (Sheller and Urry 2006), the keyword of farmers find it hard to adapt to the physical environ- ‘mobility’ has dominated the discourses and interro- ment and spaces in CRCs that are designed exclusively gations that emerged from this field. The ‘mobility’ as for urban residents, ignoring farmers’ living customs an underlying conception has been widely applied in and residential culture (Li et al. 2016). Urban living studies, generative of informative works related to also brings substantial unexpected expenditures to transport geography, cultural geography, sociology, farmers, such as food expenses, apartment manage- migration studies, tourism studies and feminism, to ment fees, utility bills, and transportation costs (Zhao name a few (Adey et al. 2014). Scholars from diverse and Zou 2017; Weiping Liu et al. 2018). The space backgrounds have noted the imperative of introdu- mismatch between CRCs and landless villagers’ erst- cing mobility theory into the hotly debated area of while rural housing can be well deciphered by displaced villagers in China. In King’s (2012) important Lefebvre’s classic space production theory (Lefebvre commentary on migration studies, he pointed out 1991). Given (social) space is socially produced, the China’s case is a reminder to researchers not to production of space encompasses three constitutive neglect ‘internal migration’, which is as important as moments: spatial practice, the representation of the discourse around translocality (Greiner and 506 C. YANG AND Z. QIAN Sakdapolrak 2013), transnationality and diaspora planning policies to mitigate the spatial mismatch (Blunt 2007). In addition, the politics of mobility has problem from the planner’s perspective and high- rendered a world with unevenly distributed power of lights the importance of nonspatial factors of employ- exercising mobility. In this vein, mobility has been ment barriers in affecting the employment issue, such criticised not being as a notion of liberality but as as human capital social support and discrimination. ‘dysfunctional, inauthentic, and rootless’ representa- The spatial mismatch in Chinese cities demon- tions (Cresswell 2010). As such, the binary of mobility strates some discrepancies with American cities. One is at the crux of offering meaningful insights into of the most significant is that, while in American, a social phenomenon as a mobile one. In rebutting ‘spatial mismatch is mainly about residential centrali- Harvey’s ‘time-space compression’ (Harvey 1989b), sation of race-based neighbourhoods in employment- Massey (1993) used the notion of ‘power geometries’ decentralised metropolitan areas’ (Xu et al. 2014, p. 2), to express the core idea that mobility is socially differ - in China, the employment locations concentrate in entiated. In often cases, this disparity in mobility the city centre with low-income residents dispersed becomes the culprit of the spatial fixity or ‘forced in the suburb areas (Wang et al. 2011). Besides, the mobility’ (Hankins et al. 2014) of vulnerable groups. targeted population in American cases is focused on These insights rooted in mobility are constructive to ethnic minority groups; therefore, racial segregation our knowledge of urban resettlement and the invo- and discrimination are central to the discourse. luntarily displaced villagers in China (Gill et al. 2011). Empirical studies have shown that displaced residents The urban resettlement has imposed a capitalist often reside in urban fringe areas with some in proxi- social relation for landless farmers in host societies, mity to the original places of the displacement, irre- embodied by the changing work-residence nexus and spective of how the compensation is negotiated (Xu the reliance on mobility. The literature on the spatial and Chan 2011). This distinctive location choice arbi- mismatch phenomenon has much to offer in facilitat- trarily made by the government exerts profound ing our understanding of urban resettlement-induced impacts on the displaced villagers’ adaptation to the mobility change. This is a theme closely interrelated urban milieu. The ‘spatial barrier’ of the resettlement with residential mobility (Hankins et al. 2014; Coulter communities can also spawn other side effects such as et al. 2016; Scott et al. 2017) and employment mobility residential immobility and residential segregation (Liu (Cresswell et al. 2016). It is worth revisiting the reset- et al. 2010b), and the relations among these aspects tlement process here that the process while is osten- are under-examined in the current body of literature. sibly the relocation of people to new residential Moreover, the transition from ‘spatial match to ‘spatial places, but de facto the relocation of the labour force mismatch of the displaced villagers has been over- from rural to urban areas. In this light, the current looked in prior studies considering the expropriation practice of forced resettlement in China has resulted of farmland is accompanied by the deprivation of in problems concerning landless farmers’ integration landless farmers’ identity and occupation as ‘farmer.’ to urban employment, which impedes the sustainable In retrospect to the North American suburbanisation implementation and progression of China’s urbanisa- started in the 1960s, the current urbanisation in China tion. The spatial mismatch theory or spatial mismatch has catalysed a new wave of spatial-mismatch and hypothesis (SMH) was originally proposed by Kain spatial restructuring in urban China. (1968) to investigate the unemployment conundrum Moving from rural to urban areas has been tradi- facing Black workers who live in the downtown com- tionally viewed as an environmental change from munities but are distant from the employment oppor- immobility to mobility (Rau 2012), whereas it is not tunities due to suburbanisation. The research on the case in the face of China’s institutional legacy. spatial mismatch has expanded to investigating Additionally, while Chinese cities generally provide other groups of the underclass in the U.S., including high job accessibility because of high density, com- Latinos, low-income workers, single mothers, and plete public transit, and the absence of social segre- immigrants (Fan 2012). The theoretical assumptions gation, the recent urban expansion has resulted in of spatial mismatch help unravel the agglomeration of increasing concerns about the spatial mismatch, poverty and unemployment rate in American mega- which further exacerbates the social stability for the cities’ downtown area (Wilson 2012). A systematic lit- disadvantaged (Fan et al. 2014). Confronting this erature review by Fan (2012) classifies four groups of transformation, Chinese researchers have carried out INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF URBAN SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT 507 empirical studies based on SMH in major cities to the distinctiveness of urban resettlement in China’s draw attention from the government and make unique political-economic climate. This structured recommendations to formulate and implement plan- review outlines the ‘urban resettlement with Chinese ning policy (Li and Wu 2006; Meng and Fang 2007; Liu characteristics’ by probing three aspects of the pro- and Weng 2008). The applicability of SMH in China has cess. We first analysed China’s particular political- been proved by the extensive attention of scholars, economic context where neoliberalism, landed although the social and economic background in finance, and property rights institutions are heavily China is different. Further argued by Zhou et al. influenced by China’s socialist ideology and authori- (2013), the SMH with its principal aiming at ‘solving tarian regime. Against this backdrop, urban resettle- urban unemployment, alleviating traffic congestion, ment in China unfolds in a way that differs from its and filling the gap between the rich and the poor’ counterparts in the Western and Asian countries. We (p.1819) is competent to address urban spatial- then show that while landless villagers are faced with mismatch issues in China. In a neoliberal China, the hindrances of land expropriation, compensation, and market exchange has prevailed as the primary form of hukou restrictions, recent improvements in such social integration (Wu 2010). In this context, landless realms have blurred the dichotomy of voluntary and farmers’ employment opportunity is inherently cir- involuntary urbanites. On this account, the cumscribed by their low levels of education and tech- entrenched criticism on the social costs concomitant nical skill, which leads to either unemployment or with urban resettlement becomes untenable and war- employment in strenuous manual labour jobs for rants further critical examination. In addition, we pro- them, thereby being socially excluded (Zhao and pose three types of mismatch that are commonly seen Zou 2017). Thus far, the spatial mismatch phenom- in landless farmers’ post-resettlement adaptation. enon that links the resettlement community’s spatial While the social mismatch has been well documented dimension with the social dimension of displaced in existing literature, space mismatch and spatial mis- villagers’ employment has unveiled another distinc- match have been underexplored, particularly the lat- tive feature of urban resettlement in China. The three ter. As China’s overall urbanisation rate reaches a high types of mismatch of post-resettlement living indicate level, the imperative of urban-rural integration and an arduous adaptation process of landless farmers. the revitalisation of the countryside has become the However, existing literature reported an overall satis- foci point of policy reform (Zhu et al. 2019; Chen et al. faction of the resettled to the improved living envir- 2020; Gao et al. 2020), which pulls spotlight onto onment, amenities, public services, and social urban resettlement. connections (Chen et al. 2016). As such, the trade- Reflecting on our review, we recommend further offs between development and social costs of urban research should delve into the following aspects. resettlement need further and nuanced First off, the future trajectory of China’s urban investigations. resettlement hinges upon the distinctive land pol- itics that are rooted in China’s political-economic settings. The recent land reforms have prioritised Conclusion the longstanding ‘three rural issues’ to advocate for According to Kingsley Davis’s S-curve (Davis 1965), integrated rural-urban development (Gao et al. a fully urbanised country has an urbanisation ratio 2020). To this end, innovative policies such as somewhere between 75% and 85%. In this light, ‘three rights separation’ (Wang and Zhang 2017) China will transform itself into a fully urbanised region and ‘land coupon’ (Han and Lin 2019) have been in the next two decades, with the projected annual deployed to protect farmers’ rights over land and urbanisation growth at 1% (Chen et al. 2019). ensure their smooth adaptation to host cities. However, this macro statistical fact does not tell the Moreover, reforms have also aimed at achieving whole story. Urban resettlement as a specific form of equitable property rights for the peasantry (Cao urbanisation has contributed much to China’s objec- et al. 2020; Song et al. 2020; Wang and Tan tive of urban-rural integration by transforming land 2020). As such, the socialist neoliberal central and population from rural into urban. Its profound state and the entrepreneurial local government repercussion for sustainability cannot be fully unra- may change their roles in urban resettlement in velled without a systematic and tailored overview of the near future, adopting more humanistic 508 C. YANG AND Z. QIAN planning approaches. Researchers should also be adaptation in terms of employment and social inte- prudent and attentive to this top-down variation gration? Clues to resolving these questions are when reading superficial anomalies related to buried deep in our discourse of ‘urban resettle- urban resettlement in China. Second, while we ment with Chinese characteristics.’ briefly mentioned the uneven geography of It is not our intention to carry out a comprehensive Chinese cities, scholars have reminded us that the review on a wide-ranging paper. Instead, we seek to specifics of urban resettlement hinge largely upon present the defining and typical features of the revo- local cities’ economic, urbanisation, and political lutionary urban resettlement process in China and call conditions. Besides, small towns and cities are for the attention of global audiences with multidisci- becoming new destinations for rural residents plinary backgrounds. In an era of ‘planetary urbaniza- (Qian and Xue 2017; Zhu 2017; Qian 2017; Jian tion’ (Brenner and Schmid 2015), China’s case is et al. 2018). While megacities are locomotives for integral to a comprehensive conceptual framework China’s urbanisation, they are not ideal places for of urbanisation in the Anthropocene. While China’s peasants to settle. Knowledge regarding small radical urbanisation and great transformation in the cities and town urbanisation and accompanied urban-rural landscape are unlikely to be replicated in urban resettlement should be expanded. Third, other regions, the numerous lessons and informative the voluntary and involuntary dichotomy asso- messages are extremely insightful for the sustainable ciated with urban resettlement should be cau- development of humankind in the unpredictable tiously and critically adopted in future studies. As future. Wilmsen and Wang (2015) reminded us, ‘what is labelled voluntary may involve manipulation and Notes prior deprivation of the affected’ and ‘resettlement labelled involuntary can include elements of 1. On 25 February 2021, President Xi Jinping announced choice’ (p.643). In this sense, whether a certain China had lifted nearly 100 million people out of poverty resettlement project can be perceived of as volun- during his 8-year tenure. The income standard for extreme poverty is defined as annual income less than tary or involuntary is under hot debate. In most 4,000 RMB (around 615 USD). Xi said at the ceremony cases, the local residents may demonstrate varying that ‘All 98.99 million rural poor people have been lifted degrees of satisfaction towards the resettlement out of poverty under the current standards, all 832 poor project (Chen et al. 2016; Lo and Wang 2018), counties have been removed, all 128,000 poor villages which complicates the generalisation of post- have been listed.’ 2. In Brenner and Schmid’s formulation of planetary urba- resettlement appraisal. It is therefore essential to nisation, urbanisation unfolds through three constitutive adopt an exploratory approach in investigating moments: concentrated urbanisation, extended urbani- urban resettlement in China. Last, the changing sation, and differential urbanisation (Brenner and Schmid attitudes of the transitioning farmers need scrutiny 2015). In theory, extended urbanisation supports the from a comparative perspective. To wit, the radical concentrated urbanisation through constantly making operational landscape from the non-urban area; the dif- deregulation of hukou (Zhang et al. 2019) has bro- ferential urbanisation involves the creative destruction of ken down the binary wall for rural residents, socio-spatial configurations to produce new urban bestowing them with free mobility. While we con- potential. In this sense, capitalist development mode tend the displaced farmers’ mobility is hindered by always involves a reproduction of social relations and the concentrated community, compared to the political forms rather than solely production from an untouched territory. Following this conceptualisation, ‘floating population’ (Li 2006; Zhu 2007; Luo et al. resettlement can be conceived as a manifestation of 2018) who have no formal qualifications of residing ‘differential urbanization,’ shouldering the responsibility in cities, they are privileged in mobility to adapt to to reorganise spatial and physical configurations for the urban life. Therefore, in investigating new urbanites affected. derived from urban resettlement, researchers must 3. Rural revitalisation is a development strategy targeting rural areas. It was first proposed in the 19th Party adhere to a relative perspective. Specifically, Congress report in 2017. Some of the existing policies whether these new urbanites voluntary or involun- and regulations include China’s Strategic Plan for Rural tary? Whether the resettlement process hinder or Revitalisation (2018–2022), Opinions on Accelerating facilitate the landless villagers’ mobility? Whether Agricultural and Rural Modernisation by Comprehensively the changed mobility impact landless farmers’ Promoting Rural Revitalisation, and the most recent INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF URBAN SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT 509 Promotion Law of the People’s Republic of China on Rural in urban land-use reform and planning, urban morphology, and Revitalisation. urban form in Chinese cities. 4. Oftentimes, developers can be either state-owned or private enterprises. Both forms of developers collaborate with local government form the local growth coalition ORCID (Qian 2007a; Wu and Waley 2018; Du 2019). For instance, the developer Greentown China has established a long Chen Yang http://orcid.org/0000-0002-7609-3640 and stable relationship with Hangzhou municipality in developing resettlement communities since 2005. 5. Zhejiang is a coastal province in eastern China and has long been the pilot of China’s rural reforms. 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Journal

International Journal of Urban Sustainable DevelopmentTaylor & Francis

Published: Sep 2, 2021

Keywords: Urban resettlement; Chinese characteristics; landless villagers; urban-rural development; mobility

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