The urbanization process in China reveals the ultimate struggle between two forms of socialist public property of the land (State and Collective ownership), and at the same time, a competition for the spoils of industrialization and urbanization between the state and the collectives (the villages).

Drawing mainly on cases in the peri-urban area of the Pearl River Delta, this talk will discuss aspects of China’s rapid urbanization. It will explore strategies that village collectives have put in place to defend their economic, social and cultural autonomy in the face of the desire of the state to both claim control of ever greater portions of the country’s collective land, and to urbanize as much as possible of the population.

In this process, creative forms of local organization and institutional innovation in China have developed, and some villages are thriving. The new strengths of the communities, however, also reveal new forms of vulnerability of the local communities.

Luigi Tomba is Director of the University of Sydney China Studies Centre. Before joining the Centre in 2017 he was for 15 years at the Australian National University, most recently as the Associate Director of the Australian Centre on China in the World. His work has always been concerned with cities and with the consequences of urbanization. His most recent book The Government Next Door: Neighborhood Politics in Urban China, was awarded the Association of Asian Studies 2016 Joseph Levenson Prize as best book on Post-1900 China.