Lecture | Land and Law in Modern China

Lecture Inform：

Speaker: Peng Chun (彭錞)

Host: Lu Yang (陆扬)

Theme: Land and Law in Modern China

Time: 19:00 – 20:30

Date: June 5 (Wednesday), 2019

Venue: Room B101, Second Gymnasium, Yenching Academy, Peking University

Language: English

Abstract：

One of the most pressing issues in contemporary China is the massive rural land takings that have taken place at a scale unprecedented in human history. Expropriation of land has dispossessed and displaced millions for several decades, despite the protection of property rights in the Chinese constitution. What is the root cause of this phenomenon? In this lecture, Professor Peng will track the origin and evolution of China's rural land takings law over the twentieth century and demonstrates an enduring tradition of land takings for state-led social transformation, under which the takings law is designed to be power-confirming. With changed socio-political circumstances and a new rights-respecting constitutional agenda, a rebalance of the law is now underway, but only within existing parameters. This lecture attempts to provide a piercing analysis of how the land has been used by the largest developing country in the world to develop itself, at what costs and where the future might be.  

Speaker：

Dr. Peng is presently Assistant Professor and Assistant Dean at Law School of Peking University. He received his doctorate and master's degree in law from the University of Oxford and holds a double degree in law and economics from Peking University. He has published widely on Chinese constitutional law, administrative law and comparative law in English and Chinese. Besides scholarly work, he writes op-eds on China and the world at The Diplomat, China Daily, China Global Television Network and Caixin. His first monograph Rural Land Takings Law in Modern China: Origin and Evolution was published with Cambridge University Press in 2018.