Summary: At least since China’s 1994 fiscal and tax reforms, land-backed development has served as the greatest source of revenue for Chinese local governments, as well as a powerful engine both for rapid industrialization and for social discontent. This circumstance reflects how state allocation of land-use rights, in China, remains a vestige of the planned economy, and how fiscal pressures on local governments, combined with differential pricing of land, incentivize what often looks to be predatory behavior.
