Political dynamics in land commodification: Commodifying rural land development rights in Chengdu, China

Commodification of land is at the forefront of the re-casting of rural China by the spread of capitalism. This study examines a market-based program of land development rights trading in Chengdu, China. The program was made possible by a change in the central government's land-use regulation that shifted the policy goal from 'no net loss' of farmland to 'no net gain' of construction land. We detail how local governments at multiple levels work together to construct land development rights as a commodity and build market institutions to foster its trading, illustrating land commodification as an inherently political process. A unique combination of innovative local policies and central political concessions created an outcome of 'commodification without dispossession' in Chengdu. Land commodification was used to finance rural reconstruction and brought profound changes to rural space, including re-configuring land-use patterns, transforming physical conditions in residential communities, and changing the representation of space.