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Suing the State: Relative Deprivation and Peasants’ Resistance in Land Expropriation in China

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  10 August 2022

Shenghua Lu ,
Xiang Zhou ,
Yuting Yao  and
Hui Wang
Shenghua Lu
Affiliation:
Zhejiang University, Hangzhou, China. Email: lushenghua@zju.edu.cn.
Xiang Zhou
Affiliation:
Zhejiang University, Hangzhou, China. Email: zhouxiang6624@163.com.
Yuting Yao
Affiliation:
Zhejiang University, Hangzhou, China. Email: yutingyao@zju.edu.cn.
Hui Wang*
Affiliation:
Zhejiang University, Hangzhou, China.
*
Email: wanghuidn@zju.edu.cn (corresponding author).
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Abstract

Land expropriation, where peasants’ property rights are encroached by the state, has been recognized as a primary source of social dissension in rural China. Since the end of the last century, the Administrative Litigation Law (ALL) has provided people with a legal weapon to defend themselves against violations by state power. Drawing on the theory of relative deprivation, this paper proposes that peasants are more likely to sue the state when they feel deprived. To examine this hypothesis, we first present a case study to depict the causal process and then use quantitative research to improve the external validity of our findings. We created a novel and unique database of prefecture-level administrative litigations and relative deprivation for Poisson regression analysis. The quantitative results prove that the more peasants feel relatively deprived, the more likely they are to sue the state. Furthermore, the positive effect of relative deprivation on administrative litigations has become more significant over time, implying peasants’ growing awareness of legal resistance. This paper concludes that a critical step towards eliminating social inequity and maintaining social stability in rural China is to reduce the relative deprivation of peasants by, for example, allowing them to share in land value appreciation in the process of urbanization.

摘要

摘要

由于在征地的过程中农民丧失了对土地的使用权，因此土地征收成为了中国农村社会纠纷的一个重要来源。自上世纪末以来，《行政诉讼法》为民众提供了应对国家权力侵犯的法律武器。借鉴相对剥夺理论，本文提出假说：当农民感到被剥夺时，他们更有可能起诉政府。为了检验这一假说，我们首先通过案例分析描述因果过程，然后通过定量研究提高其外部效度。基于由行政诉讼案件和相对剥夺感指标构建而成的数据库，我们利用泊松回归模型对假说进行检验。回归结果表明，农民相对剥夺感程度越高，该城市关于征地的行政诉讼案件越多。此外，随着时间的推移，相对剥夺对行政诉讼的正向影响越来越显著，这意味着农民的法律意识日益增强。本文的结论是，降低农民的相对剥夺感是减小社会不平等、维护中国农村社会稳定的关键步骤。允许农民在城市化过程中分享土地增值收益将是其中的关键举措。

Keywords

relative deprivationland expropriationadministrative litigationresistancesocial stabilityChina相对剥夺土地征收行政诉讼反抗社会稳定中国
Type
Research Article
Information
The China Quarterly , Volume 251 , September 2022 , pp. 798 - 821
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Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2022. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of SOAS University of London

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