Property Rights Reforms and Changing Grassroots Governance in China’s Urban—Rural Peripheries: The Case of Changping District in Beijing

This paper analyses how rural property rights reforms have reshaped grassroots governance in the rapid urbanisation process in China. The management and distribution of the villages’ collective property has become a flashpoint for local conflict when collective farmland is taken for urban uses. Changping, a rural district located on the northern periphery of Beijing, pioneered a property rights reform to convert villages’ collective assets into a new form of shareholding co-operative. Along with the election of a new board of directors that is now in charge of collective property, the reforms are redefining the jurisdiction of the party, the village government and the shareholding co-operative organisation, thus reconfiguring the political and economic power structure at the village level.