ABSTRACT
In the literature of political economy, landownership is a problematic concept. For Marx (1963; 1971), landownership relations embodied not only relations between an owner and the land but the full complement of social relations of production. Others view landownership as the sum total of the rights to own, to possess, to control, to cultivate, and to dispose of or otherwise utilize the land (Jiang 1982; Li Zezhong 1986). This chapter examines landownership rights in China during the era of mobilizational collectivism (1955-1980) and assesses the changes in ownership relations in the 1980s as a result of contractual and market-oriented reforms. Our focus is the multifaceted implications for social and economic relations of changes in landownership.
