Feature

Local Economy
Urban regeneration in China: 26(5) 337–347
! The Author(s) 2011

Policy, development, Reprints and permissions:

sagepub.co.uk/journalsPermissions.nav

and issues DOI: 10.1177/0269094211409117

lec.sagepub.com

Lin Ye
Sun Yat-sen University, China

Abstract
Urban regeneration in China has attracted vast attention around the world in recent decades.
This article discusses several critical issues in China’s recent urban regeneration policies, including
how residents and communities are affected and how their economic and social rights are
protected, the role of governments and developers, and the interaction between main partici-
pants in a broad Chinese socio-political context. The article introduces Guangdong Province’s
new master plan to revive its urban areas and examines how it intends to engage the government,
developers, and communities in urban regeneration. The findings are drawn from reviewing
government documents, interviewing government officials and urban residents, and conducting
fieldwork investigation.

Keywords
China, growth coalitions, Guangdong, housing redevelopment, urban regeneration

Thirty years of urban 1990 revealed that more than one-quarter of

regeneration in China
China’s urban regeneration is the result of
multiple intertwined historical, economic,
and institutional forces acting since the
beginning of the economic reform period
in the late 1970s. During the 10 years of
the Cultural Revolution (1966 to 1976),
China’s urban landscape was in an extre-
mely undesirable condition and its urban
development virtually stagnated. Many
Chinese cities were facing critical urban pro-
blems. For example, a municipal survey of
housing conditions in Beijing conducted in
inner-city dwellings required urgent atten-
tion due to their structural instability and
severe deterioration (Shin, 2009a). In
Shanghai, urban regeneration emerged as
a major task of the city government. In
1980 a municipal policy was formulated to
Corresponding author:
Lin Ye, Center for Chinese Public Administration
Research, Institute of Urban Governance and Urban
Development, and School of Government, Sun Yat-sen
University, No. 135 Xingangxi Road, Guangzhou 510275,
China.
Email: ylljc@hotmail.com
338
redevelop the old city centre and 23 plots of
land were designated as urban regeneration
sites (Yang and Chang, 2007). In order to
fulfil their urban regeneration mission,
Chinese local governments carried out
large-scale redevelopment projects in cities
like Beijing and Shanghai. Urban regenera-
tion was called weigai (unsafe building
reconstruction) in Beijing and penghu
qingli (shanty clearance) in Shanghai (He
and Wu, 2005). However, due to govern-
ment underfunding, the state-run model
was inadequate to achieve its goals in the
early stage.
The country underwent fundamental
land reform and housing privatization in
the 1980s. Two significant pieces of legisla-
tion were passed by the National People’s
Congress in 1988: Amendment to the
Constitution (CONSTITUTION 88) and
Land Administrative Law (LAL 88), to
separate land use rights from land owner-
ship rights. While urban land remains state-
owned and rural land is owned by villages
collectively, commercial, industrial, and
residential property owners acquire land
use rights by purchase for a 40-, 50-, and
70-year term, respectively (with options to
renew for a longer period). In the mid-
1990s, the Central Government in China
began to decentralize its fiscal authority
and no longer allocated funds for local
urban (re)development. Local governments
had to assume the responsibility to seek
fiscal resources for their (re)development
purposes and began to directly take charge
of urban (re)development. The private
sector was invited into the domain of
urban regeneration to provide more funding
options, which further opened up the hous-
ing market in China for privatization and
led to the real estate boom in Chinese
cities in recent decades. With the involve-
ment of the private sector and foreign
investment, the real estate industry has sig-
nificantly expanded its proportion of the
urban economy and increasingly
Local Economy 26(5)
contributes to extensive urban regeneration.
Accordingly, the scale of urban regenera-
tion expanded, and its commercial compo-
nents increased (Fang, 2000). The National
Regulation of Urban Housing Demolition
and Relocation was implemented in
November 2001 to provide for a monetary
compensation policy for relocated urban
residents, indicating the further marketiza-
tion of urban regeneration (He and Wu,
2005).
During this process, many scholars have
explained that local governments, private
developers, and foreign investors formed a
regime-like growth coalition in China
(Yang and Chang, 2007; Zhang, 2002;
Zhu, 1999). Decentralization and localiza-
tion became a dominant theme in urban
(re)development in China in the 1990s.
Local government moved from its tradi-
tional role of delivering services and admin-
istering policies into a new function of
supporting the formulation of local devel-
opment strategies and growth coalitions
with businesses. Zhang (2002: 496–497)
identifies the emergence of a new growth
coalition in Shanghai, composed of ‘local
government and nonpublic sectors (interna-
tional and domestic) with limited central
involvement in development projects and
little community participation in decision
making’. As the result of many interactive
forces including housing marketization,
fiscal decentralization, land reform, and to
a lesser extent, foreign investment, urban
regeneration became a dominant theme in
China around the turn of the century. A
prosperous property market was developed,
and the heyday of urban (re)development
arrived. He and Wu (2009: 290–291)
observe that ‘[w]ith the active involvement
of the private sector, urban redevelopment,
which used to be the obligation of the state,
has now been transferred to the pre-mature
market’ and ‘the rationale of urban redeve-
lopment in China has changed from the
alleviation of dilapidated housing estates
Ye
as a means of social welfare provision to
state-sponsored property development as a
means of growth promotion’. Such urban
redevelopment often involves local govern-
ments and the private sector in an impor-
tant partnership to create prestigious urban
space which tends to be expensive for exist-
ing communities (Xu et al., 2009; Zhu, 2002,
2004).
Major challenges and issues of
urban regeneration in China
China’s urban regeneration has received
vast attention. Among the major issues are
its purpose, legitimacy, and institutional
arrangement. Government-backed urban
regeneration has been replaced by privately
funded and property-led regeneration. This
process is driven by diverse motivations of
different levels of the government, including
transforming urban land use functions,
demonstrating the entrepreneurial capabil-
ity of local government, and maximizing
negotiated land benefits. Recently Shin
(2009a) argues that in the 2000s, although
new policies have been implemented to
reduce the local government’s entrepreneur-
ial role in urban regeneration and try to be
more socially inclusive in its regeneration
approach, the local government’s entrepre-
neurial nature has persisted because Chinese
local governments hold the power to dis-
pose of urban land use rights, effectively
making them de facto landlords. He et al.
(2009) further analyse the institution of land
requisition and property rights redistribu-
tion in China and argue that:
[t]he relentless pursuit of urban-based eco-
nomic growth has led to the redistribution
of land-based property rights from farm-
ers to governments and from governments
to developers and then to end-users. In the
process, the different parties involved
attempt to do what they can to capture
any ambiguous rights that lie in the
public domain (p. 1944).
339
Zhu (2002) argues that in the urban area
where land is state-owned and operated by
state-owned enterprises (SOEs):
[t]he state’s property rights over urban land
are attenuated assets dissipated to other
actors in the emerging market. The ambig-
uous delineation of property rights over
urban land has created opportunities for
actors involved in the development process,
other than the state, to compete for the
assets left in the open domain (p. 54).
Many other scholars have argued that
China’s urban development and regenera-
tion is characterized by the property-led
process and the ownership and use right of
land is the intrinsic issue for the develop-
ment process (He and Wu, 2005; Xu and
Yeh, 2009; Xu et al., 2009; Zhang, 2002;
Zhu, 2002, 2004). Because of this funda-
mental issue, urban regeneration in China
has long been considered controversial.
Several critical questions have been raised,
including how residents’ economic and
social rights are protected, the roles of gov-
ernments and developers, and the interac-
tion between the main participants in the
regeneration and relocation process. In
order to tackle these issues and analyse the
latest urban regeneration policies in China,
the following parts of this article will intro-
duce a new master plan in Guangdong
Province to revive its urban areas, specifi-
cally targeted at dilapidated urban districts,
abandoned industrial sites and urban vil-
lages,1 and discuss how the Government is
trying to develop alternative schemes to
fulfil urban regeneration goals and address
the interests of different actors participating
in the process.
The new urban regeneration
(San Jiu Gai Zao) master plan in
Guangdong
Most of the existing literature on China’s
urban regeneration focuses on policies and
340
cases in the cities of Beijing (e.g. Fang and
Zhang, 2003; Shin, 2009a) and Shanghai
(e.g. He and Wu, 2005; Wu, 2002; Yang
and Chang, 2007; Zhu, 2002). Few studies
have looked at cities in the Pearl River
Delta (PRD) region. The PRD region is
one of the most developed regions in China
and experienced tremendous economic and
social development in the last three decades.
Guangzhou and Shenzhen are two core cities
in this region, each with populations of over
10 million and annual per capita gross
domestic products (GDP) well over
$10,000. The Shenzhen Special Economic
Zone (SEZ) was the first area to experiment
with urban land reform in China in the early
1980s. Both Guangzhou and Shenzhen
experienced tremendous urban expansion
in the last few decades. During the 10-year
period between 1989 and 1999, the city of
Guangzhou doubled the size of its non-agri-
cultural land from 35,000 hectares to nearly
70,000 hectares. Non-agricultural land as a
percentage of the total land area increased
from less than 10 percent to 19 percent
(Lin, 2007). Most studies on Shenzhen have
investigated its urban villages and urban-
rural migration (Chung, 2009, 2010; Song
et al., 2008; Wang et al., 2009).
In 2009, Guangdong Province issued its
No. 78 ordinance to implement its Urban
Regeneration Plan. Following the ordi-
nance, the Department of Land and
Resources (DLR) of Guangdong Province
announced a series of guidelines and poli-
cies to administer the urban regeneration
process in all major cities in Guangdong.
This Plan is part of Guangdong’s action
plan to implement the Outline Plan for the
Reform and Development of the Pearl River
Delta (2008–2020) issued by the National
Development and Reform Commission in
December 2008. One of the local officials
indicated that: ‘this was one of the most
aggressive policies in the country and the
[Guangdong] Provincial Government
received a special approval from the
Local Economy 26(5)
Ministry of Land and Resources [of
China] to become the pilot province for
such policies so other provinces may
follow’ (Personal interview, 30 June 2010)
This Plan announced five fundamental prin-
ciples to facilitate an ‘open, fair, and equi-
table’ urban regeneration policy. First, the
Government intends to assume only an
administrative and conductive role in this
process while the market (and private devel-
opers) will be the main operator of regen-
eration projects. Second, it requires that all
the land subject to the Plan go through a
rigorous registration and application pro-
cess in order to qualify for special policies
so that the actual property owner (indivi-
dual or collective) can be identified and
entitled to the regeneration compensation
and relocation. Third, all urban regenera-
tion under this Plan needs to be consistent
with existing master plans for urban long-
term development and historical preserva-
tion. Fourth, all regeneration projects are
targeted to maximize the return on land
resources, existing assets, and regeneration
capital. Fifth, the principle of fairness and
equity will be employed to solve some his-
torical land and property ownership issues.
There are several sensitive and intricate
issues this Plan set out to solve. One of the
most important was how a piece of land
qualifies for this regeneration plan and is
entitled to special redevelopment policies.
There are three primary categories of land
included in this Plan: abandoned urban
industrial sites, dilapidated urban residen-
tial areas, and existing urban villages. The
former two categories are urban land that
was previously developed but no longer sui-
table for industrial or residential use, and
they will be the main subject of discussion
in this article.
Former industrial land
As discussed earlier, the PRD region is one
of the most developed regions in China.
Ye
Major cities in this region, such as
Guangzhou and Shenzhen have undergone
a significant transformation from a produc-
tive space to a consumption space and are
targeting tertiary industry as the main
development focus, particularly after the
global financial crisis intensified their need
for economic restructuring (Lin, 2007;
Ye, 2009, 2010a). In 2009 the City of
Guangzhou issued an ordinance to remove
over 300 manufacturing plants that were
considered environmentally unfriendly and
hazardous from its urban core and replace
them with companies providing profes-
sional services. These plants were required
to move out of the urban core within a man-
datory time frame, and a heavy fine will be
imposed for any delay or noncompliance.
Ye (2010a) finds that the PRD region has
formed several major regional plans to out-
line its industrial development, population
growth, land use, infrastructure building,
and environment protection. These plans
pointed out that around Hong Kong,
the three major metropolitan regions
of Guangzhou-Foshan, Shenzhen-Hong
Kong-Dongguan, and Zhuhai-Macau-
Zhongshan will primarily focus on develop-
ing high-value-added industrial products
and the outer and rural areas will become
the manufacturing backyard with favour-
able labour and land costs. One of the
expected outcomes of such an arrangement
is to provide major cities in the PRD region
with more land for future development.
According to China’s Land Administration
Law, land in the urban area is owned either
by the municipal government or SOEs. The
municipal government enjoys the de facto
ownership of urban industrial sites and can
dispose of the use or lease rights of such land
with almost absolute control (He et al.,
2009). Workers of SOEs are easily dismissed
with fairly insignificant compensation or are
pushed into the national social welfare net-
work. Such an ownership structure has made
land resources from abandoned urban
341
industrial sites readily available for regen-
eration under the municipal government’s
mandate. The City of Guangzhou also
offered additional compensation of 10 per-
cent and 5 percent for plants to terminate
their production before the end of 2010 and
2012, respectively, to encourage an early
exit.
Dilapidated residential areas
In contrast with the government mandate to
redevelop abandoned industrial land in the
urban area, residential land in dilapidated
urban areas presents a more complicated
policy issue due to land use rights being
legally owned by residents. In this round
of urban regeneration, Guangdong
Province introduced a two-round public
participation scheme, in order to achieve
public consensus and a smooth regeneration
process. According to the Plan, once a
dilapidated urban residential area has been
identified a survey will be administered to
ask all residents in that area whether they
agree to be part of the regeneration pro-
gramme. Only if a 90 percent positive
response rate is achieved can the process
move ahead. Otherwise this area will
remain as it is and not be included in the
municipal regeneration plan. With the
required approval rate, the municipal gov-
ernment will then start the second round
process to collect a comprehensive commu-
nity and residential profile of the area and
develop a detailed technical redevelopment
plan. The required information will include
land condition, property ownership, resi-
dent demographics, public infrastructure,
historical sites, and compensation schemes
for relocation. The regeneration plan
including all this information will then be
made public to all residents. With the
approval of the municipal government a
second-round survey will be conducted
and approval by a minimum of two-thirds
of all residents is required to start the
342
implementation phase of the regeneration
plan. It is expected that such a two-round
public participation process will ensure the
transparency and equity of the urban regen-
eration programme.
Some recent studies have revealed that in
urban China, low-income neighbourhoods
have appeared where a large proportion of
urban poor are concentrated (He et al.,
2010; Liu et al., 2008; Wu et al., 2010b).
Urban poverty is highly concentrated in
dilapidated urban areas and the residential
conditions there have made the living envir-
onment of the urban poor increasingly unde-
sirable. According to an interview with a local
urban development officer: ‘they [the urban
poor] actually want the regeneration so their
living condition can be improved. With the
relocation compensation they may be able
to move back to the area when it is redeve-
loped and becomes a much nicer community’
(Personal interview, 8 November 2010).
Unlike farmers in urban villages who have a
stronger sentimental attachment to the land
and so are reluctant to give up their land and
property for new residential development,
underprivileged urban residents tend to be
more in favour of regeneration. Therefore,
although land and property use rights issues
for dilapidated urban residential areas are
more complicated than for industrial sites,
impoverished urban residents tend to wel-
come regeneration and approve the plan as
long as it provides them with a fair compen-
sation and relocation scheme (Ye, 2010b). By
contrast, in places like Guangzhou, village
committees tend to be strongly organized to
protect their collective land ownership and
thus demand higher compensation, which
may make regeneration in urban villages
more difficult (Wu et al., 2010a).
Land leasing and local government
finance
The above discussion indicates that the
availability of former industrial and
Local Economy 26(5)
residential land in the urban area makes
Guangdong’s aggressive urban regeneration
plan possible. There are economic and social
needs for fair and effective urban regenera-
tion to restructure the local economy and
improve urban living conditions. However,
urban development in Guangdong and most
parts of China does not follow this logical
path and has far more complicated political,
economic, and social implications. One of
the reasons for such divergence is that rev-
enue obtained by leasing urban land has con-
tributed disproportionately to local
governments’ budgets in China. China
implemented a major budget reform in
1994, by which the Central Government
seized a far greater control of revenues
than before and local governments were
left with limited fiscal resources. According
to Lin (2006), local governments controlled
over 70 percent of the total revenue in China
before 1994. After the budget reform, the
central and local governments almost
evenly shared revenues, with local govern-
ments’ public service responsibilities vir-
tually unchanged. The imbalance of
revenues and expenditures forced local gov-
ernments to look for additional revenue
sources. Most municipal governments in
China found revenue from land leasing a sig-
nificant addition to their budget. According
to Man (2010), local governments in China
leased 45,391 hectares of land in 1999 and
the figure soared to 165,860 hectares in
2008, representing an annual average
growth rate of 15.5 percent. Moreover,
land leasing revenue increased from RMB
51.4 bn to RMB 1.03 trn during this 10-
year period, representing an annual average
growth rate of 45 percent. Land leasing rev-
enue has become the fastest growing major
revenue source for most local governments
in China, accounting for over 40 percent of
local revenues in 2009 (Man, 2010). Local
governments also received billions of reven-
ues from real estate development and trans-
action taxes. These astounding statistics
Ye
have received widespread attention both
domestically and internationally. Many
have argued that such a revenue structure
has significantly contributed to China’s
unprecedented real estate price spike and
made urban living unaffordable (He et al.,
2010; Lin, 2006; Man, 2010). As local gov-
ernments sought to maximize their revenue,
the land leasing prices skyrocketed through a
fiercely competitive bidding process.
Developers in turn sought to secure their
profits by raising house sale prices. In con-
sequence, local governments have been con-
sistently blamed for soaring housing prices
and the unfair displacement of urban resi-
dents in order to make land available for
lucrative real estate development. Many
also linked such revenue-seeking land devel-
opment with recent mega-events in major
Chinese cities, such as the 2008 Olympic
Games in Beijing (Broudehoux, 2007; Shin,
2009b). After urban residents have moved
away from their dwellings under redevelop-
ment they may no longer be able to afford
the new housing, even with financial com-
pensation, after the regeneration is
complete.
Issues and discussion
As discussed in the previous sections, the
urban regeneration process in China
involves intertwined interests and coali-
tions. The Government has at least two pri-
mary reasons to aggressively pursue urban
regeneration. First, urban regeneration ben-
efits general economic development by
enabling Chinese cities to maintain their
sustainable and healthy growth. Second, if
not more important, the existing financial
and political inter-governmental relations
between the local and central governments
in China have forced local governments to
pursue land-centred urban (re)development
in order to collect significant amount of rev-
enues from land leasing. The goal is to
maintain high economic growth rates and,
343
to some extent, the legitimacy of the govern-
ment. Urban residents for their part tend to
have the desire to make their neighbour-
hoods better through the regeneration pro-
cess. The key issue for them is to obtain fair
and favourable compensation to be able to
move back to the better neighbourhood
once the regeneration is complete. Private
developers are the market force driving gov-
ernments’ regeneration policies, with their
primary goal to produce maximum profits.
As He and Wu (2005) point out, these three
parties perform different but interacting
roles in China’s urban (re)development pro-
cess: governments are the ‘active collabora-
tor’ (for urban district government) and
‘authoritative mediator and supervisor’
(for municipal government); developers are
the ‘primary participator’ while urban
neighbourhoods are ‘an excluded actor’.
The nature of urban residents’ involvement
has been far from desirable.
In most cases, urban residents are unaware
of the urban regeneration plan until it has
been decided and announced by govern-
ment and developers. Moreover, people
normally have no idea about exactly
when the demolition and relocation will
commence even if they have been informed
of the regeneration plan from various
channels (He and Wu, 2005: 16).
Due to such an unbalanced power struc-
ture, urban (re)development has been one of
the most scrutinized issues in China in the
last decade, particularly with regard to dis-
placement, relocation, and compensation
policies. There have been numerous reports
of clashes between urban residents and gov-
ernments in the removal process which
received both domestic and international
media attention. The Chinese Government
has long been blamed for the unfair com-
pensation for displaced residents and low
levels of public involvement in the deci-
sion-making process of its urban (re)deve-
lopment plans.
344
Facing these challenges, the Guangdong
Plan has developed some policies intended
to remedy the problems and design a fair
and acceptable urban (re)development pro-
cess. In addition to the two-round public
participation requirement, the Plan pro-
vides different regeneration models for dif-
ferent types of urban area and allows urban
residents to apply for the most appropriate
model for their area. For large urban areas
with a high concentration of dilapidated
housing, a site demolition, temporary relo-
cation, and voluntary move-back process
will be employed to implement the regenera-
tion process. Residents will receive mone-
tary compensation while the regeneration
construction is ongoing and they are tem-
porarily relocated. They will have the
option to move back to the area once the
regeneration is complete or they can opt to
receive a lump sum payment for their
former home. For residents who wish to
move back to the area, their new residence
will be provided based on their previous
housing footage. Residents whose existing
housing area is below 40 m2 will be entitled
to a minimum new housing unit of 40 m2 to
ensure their basic living needs. Urban resi-
dents can also apply for single building
renovation funds. The Government will
provide financial assistance for renovations
such as lift construction, external decora-
tion, and safety inspection. For urban
areas which are within the city’s historical
preservation plan, all new construction will
follow the existing building style of the area
to maintain the cultural and historical heri-
tage of the community. The Plan requires
that 80 percent of government revenue
from land leasing be allocated to the muni-
cipal level, while the remaining 20 percent
will go to the urban district level. This fund
will be earmarked for urban regeneration
projects and their infrastructure provisions.
For all regeneration projects, the
Government will be responsible for infra-
structure provision. Redeveloped areas will
Local Economy 26(5)
also enjoy a property tax freeze for a specific
period of time.
The Guangdong Government hopes that
with these policies, its urban regeneration
will be a more open, fair, and acceptable
process. However, it is hard to predict
whether the policies will achieve the
expected success. The following section pre-
sents some preliminary findings on the
public response to this policy innovation.
In November and December of 2010, initial
semi-structured personal interviews were
conducted in one of the urban regeneration
areas which had passed the first round of
public voting and was awaiting a detailed
regeneration plan to be announced for the
second round. The responses were mixed.
Preliminary results revealed that the resi-
dents either were not aware of or had low
confidence in such public participation and
community engagement plans. Some resi-
dents, as discussed in the above sections,
hope that their living environment can be
improved and believe that the regeneration
project will bring some benefit to the area.
Others are more suspicious. One resident
said that she did not know if she would be
able to move back after the project is com-
pleted and ‘it is all under the control of
government’ (Personal interview, 24
November 2010). Some residents indicated
that they were not well informed in the first-
round voting. One responded that ‘[the first
round voting] was not clear and we were not
aware of what was in the forms’ (Personal
interview, 24 November 2010). Another
resident said that ‘there was little informa-
tion on the relocation plan . . . the only
material was some flyers but now they are
all gone’ (Personal interview, 6 December
2010). It seems that the public consultation
did not provide enough information for
residents regarding the relocation and com-
pensation plan and many residents were
hoping for more participation in the pro-
cess. During Guangdong’s urban regenera-
tion process, its district-level regeneration
Ye
offices work closely with local community
administration agencies (she qu). Due to
the Asian Games and Asian Para Games
in November and December 2010 in
Guangzhou, most local governments
diverted their resources to facilitate the
games and most regeneration processes
were put on hold to avoid any possible con-
flict in public disapproval.
Conclusion and future
research agenda
This article is a preliminary discussion of a
long-term urban regeneration research pro-
ject and summarizes the findings from field
work carried out from June to December
2010. During this initial period of research,
some intriguing new developments in urban
regeneration in China have been identified,
which call for further study.
China’s urban regeneration is the result
of various internal and external factors.
Domestically, there is demand from urban
residents to improve the quality of their
living environment. Local governments con-
sider land leasing and real estate revenues
one of the most important revenue streams
for them to fund economic and social poli-
cies. Internationally, the global financial
crisis required an economic restructuring,
particularly in economically advanced
areas in China. Such restructuring led to
changing urban industrial and residential
landscapes. As China opened up its land
and real estate development market, private
and foreign investment aggressively entered
the field of urban regeneration to seek max-
imum profit. Property-led and rent-seeking
coalitions among governments and develo-
pers have been identified in regions like the
Yangtze River and Pearl River Delta
regions. Under such economic and fiscal
pressures, demolition, relocation, and
regeneration have become one of the most
discussed policies in China. The Guangdong
Government has tried to facilitate a smooth
345
and successful regeneration process by
designing major new policies, including sim-
plifying the application process to sort out
the historical land ownership and use right
issues, requiring a more open and equitable
public participation process, and making
more funds available for the continuing
development of redeveloped areas.
However, the implementation of these poli-
cies demands more oversight to make sure
local residents’ property rights are protected
and that they will enjoy the benefits from
regeneration projects.
In addition to Guangdong’s latest poli-
cies identified in this article, there have also
been some major efforts at the national level
to design and implement more successful
urban regeneration policies. In January
2010, the State Council of China issued a
draft of the Regulation of Property Taking
and Compensation on State-Owned Land for
national public comments (State Council of
China, 2011). The first round of national
discussions lasted over 10 months and pro-
duced more than 65,600 comments from
over 40 Chinese cities. In December 2010,
a revised draft was announced for a second
round of public comments. After receiving
an additional 37,800 responses from all over
the country, the State Council approved the
proposed regulation in January 2011. A
detailed implementation plan will be
announced in the coming months for
national adoption. This regulation is to
replace the 2001 National Regulation of
Urban Housing Demolition and Relocation,
which has long been considered unfair and
outdated. This new national regulation
points out some policy agendas that could
shape China’s urban regeneration in the
near future. For example, it requires that
the residents being relocated receive finan-
cial compensation comparable to the
market price of their properties and be
entitled to temporary housing assistance.
A court hearing will be available for any
conflict arising during the relocation
346
process, in order to provide an appeal
mechanism for displaced residents. This
policy is a major transition from the pre-
viously enacted administrative process
whereby the Government assumed the deci-
sion-making role in such conflicts. Another
widely discussed question was whether and
how to include a mandatory public voting
process when designing and implementing
urban regeneration policies, such as the
two-round public participation required by
the Guangdong Plan. A nation-wide man-
datory public voting requirement was very
difficult to establish due to significantly dif-
ferent local politics across the country.
Therefore only a general public participa-
tion requirement was included in the
approved regulation. Moreover, this regula-
tion only regulated compensation for state-
owned industrial and residential land, which
left the compensation standard for collec-
tively-owned rural land unclear and solely
subject to local jurisdiction. In spite of these
limitations, this newly approved national
regulation indicates the Chinese
Government’s intention to adopt more
acceptable urban regeneration policies and
to ease the wide spread conflicts and com-
plaints of recent decades. As discussed in
this article, many factors will affect the
implementation of such a major new regu-
lation and monitoring its outcomes across
China will be a major field of research over
the next few years. In the end, the key to the
success of China’s urban regeneration is to
develop a regeneration scheme such that
governments, developers, and residents act
collaboratively to develop equitable com-
pensation, relocation, and redevelopment
policies and, of the same importance, to
effectively and efficiently implement such
policies.
Acknowledgements
This research was jointly supported by a 985
Project of the Center for Chinese Public
Local Economy 26(5)
Administration Research, a ‘Hundred Talent
Program’ research start-up grant, and the 2010
Humanities and Social Science Young Scholar
Tongshan Program Fund from Sun Yat-sen
University. The author wants to thank the
Urban Regeneration Office of Haizhu District,
City of Guangzhou and his two graduate stu-
dents for their assistance in this project. The
author is grateful to the editor and anonymous
reviewers for their constructive comments on an
earlier version of this article. All errors and omis-
sions remain the author’s.
Note
1. An ‘urban village’ is a former rural settlement
which has come to be incorporated in a city
through its expansion.
References
Broudehoux A (2007) Spectacular Beijing: The
conspicuous construction of an Olympic
metropolis. Journal of Urban Affairs 29(4):
383–399.
Chung H (2009) The planning of ‘Villages-in-
the-City’ in Shenzhen, China: The signifi-
cance of the new state-led approach.
International Planning Studies 14(3): 253–273.
Chung H (2010) Building an image of Villages-
in-the-City: A clarification of China’s distinct
urban spaces. International Journal of Urban
and Regional Research 33(4): 957–973.
Fang K (2000) Contemporary Regeneration in the
Inner City of Beijing: Survey, Analysis and
Investigation. Beijing: China Construction
Industry Publishing House. (In Chinese).
Fang K and Zhang Y (2003) Plan and market
mismatch: Urban regeneration in Beijing
during a period of transition. Asia Pacific
Viewpoint 44(2): 149–162.
He S and Wu F (2005) Property-led regeneration
in post-reform China: A case study of
Xintiandi regeneration project in Shanghai.
Journal of Urban Affairs 27(1): 1–23.
He S and Wu F (2009) China’s emerging neolib-
eral urbanism: Perspectives from urban rede-
velopment. Antipode 41(2): 282–304.
He S, Liu Y, Webster C and Wu F (2009)
Property rights redistribution, entitlement
failure and the impoverishment of landless
Ye
farmers in China. Urban Studies 46(9):
1925–1949.
He S, Wu F, Webster C and Liu Y (2010)
Poverty concentration and determinants in
China’s urban low-income neighbourhoods
and social groups. International Journal
of Urban and Regional Research 34(2):
328–349.
Lin GCS (2006) The Political and Social
Implication of Land Development in
Contemporary China. Peking: Center for
Urban Development and Land Policy,
Peking University-Lincoln Institute. (In
Chinese).
Lin GCS (2007) Reproducing spaces of Chinese
urbanisation: New city-based and land-
centred urban transformation. Urban Studies
44(9): 1827–1855.
Liu Y, He S and Wu J (2008) Urban pauperiza-
tion under China’s social exclusion: A case
study of Nanjing. Journal of Urban Affairs
30(1): 21–36.
Man Y (2010) The ‘Land Budgeting’ in China. (In
Chinese). Available at: http://www.gmw.cn/
content/2010-08/10/content_1209977.htm.
Shin HB (2009a) Residential regeneration and
the entrepreneurial local state: The implica-
tions of Beijing’s shifting emphasis on urban
regeneration policies. Urban Studies 46(13):
2815–2839.
Shin HB (2009b) Life in the shadow of mega-
events: Beijing summer Olympia and its
impact on housing. Journal of Asian Policy
2(2): 122–141.
Song Y, Zenou Y and Ding C (2008) Let’s not
throw the baby out with the bath water: The
role of urban villages in housing rural
migrants in China. Urban Studies 45(2):
313–330.
State Council of China. (2011) State Council
passed the proposed regulation of property
taking and compensation on state-owned land.
(In Chinese). Available at: http://www.gov.
cn/ldhd/2011-01/19/content_1788311.htm.
Wang YP, Wang YL and Wu JS (2009)
Urbanization and informal development in
China: Urban villages in Shenzhen.
International Journal of Urban and Regional
Research 33(4): 957–973.
Wu F (2002) China’s changing urban gover-
nance in the transition towards a more
347
market-oriented economy. Urban Studies
39(7): 1071–1093.
Wu F, Zhang F and Webster C (2010b) The devel-
opment of migrant villages under China’s
rapid urbanization. Paper presented at the
International Conference on China Urban
Development, 7–8 December, Hong Kong.
Wu F, Webster C, He S and Liu Y (2010a)
Urban Poverty in China. Cheltenham:
Edward Elgar.
Xu J and Yeh A (2009) Decoding urban land
governance: State reconstruction in contem-
porary Chinese cities. Urban Studies 46(3):
559–581.
Xu J, Yeh A and Wu F (2009) Land commodi-
fication: New land development and politics
in China since the late 1990s. International
Journal of Urban & Regional Research 33(4):
890–913.
Yang Y and Chang C (2007) An urban regenera-
tion regime in China: A case study of urban
regeneration in Shanghai’s Taipingqiao area.
Urban Studies 44(9): 1809–1826.
Ye L (2009) Regional government and govern-
ance in China and the United States. Public
Administration Review 69(Issue Supplement
s1 December): S116–S121.
Ye L (2010a) How regions in China fight the
financial crisis. Paper presented at the. Fifth
Sino-US International Conference on Public
Administration. Xiamen, China.
Ye L (2010b) The dynamics of urban regenera-
tion in China: A case study of Guangzhou.
Paper presented at the International
Conference on China Urban Development, 7–
8 December, Hong Kong.
Zhang T (2002) Urban development and a socia-
list pro-growth coalition in Shanghai. Urban
Affairs Review 37(4): 475–499.
Zhu J (1999) Local growth coalition: The context
and implications of China’s gradualist urban
land reforms. International Journal of Urban
and Regional Research 23(3): 534–548.
Zhu J (2002) Urban development under ambig-
uous property rights: A case of China’s tran-
sition economy. International Journal of
Urban and Regional Research 26(1): 41–57.
Zhu J (2004) From land use right to land devel-
opment right: Institutional change in China’s
urban development. Urban Studies 41(7):
1249–1267.