Page 38 - 香港浸會大學16-17

4. Funded Research Projects

4.8 Land Development, Housing Relocation, and Social
Restructuring in Rural China (on-going project)

Principal Investigator: Prof. Li Si-ming

Director of LEWI, Convenor of Urbanization and
Mobility Working Group of LEWI and
Chair Professor of Geography

(original principle investigator was Prof. Song Jing,
former Research Assistant Professor of HKBU)

Source of Funding: Faculty Research Grant, HKBU
Amount Awarded: HKD84,445

Brief Introduction:

Despite the three decades of market-oriented reforms, Chinese government has

been cautious about developing rural farmland, but major changes have
occurred recently to facilitate land transfer and urban sprawl into the

countryside. In particular, the new national strategy to develop Western China
has resulted in a boom in development zones and industrial parks, which are
mostly located on urban fringes where land has to be expropriated from

peasants. However, it is yet to be explored to what extent such growth-inducing
investments have broken the “invisible wall” between urban and rural areas and

reshaped the definitions of “whose city” and “whose home”. This project will serve
as a pilot study in one Chinese village where land has been gradually taken

away for urban expansion and villagers have been relocated to commercial
housing units or self-built neighborhoods in newly urbanized areas. From the

perspective of revenue sharing, this project will examine differences in
homeownership structures and housing values given various ways of switching to
urban residency. From the perspective of the urban fabric, this project will

illustrate variations in residential patterns, living conditions, and community
structure related with different relocation processes.

33 HONG KONG BAPTIST UNIVERSITY | David C. Lam Institute for East-West Studies