Petitioners Line up in Beijing (Daniel Michaeli, 11/2008)

John Garnaut of the Sydney Morning Herald says rural land disputes could lead to “revolutionary turmoil” in China, citing Yu Jianrong of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences. This is a very sensitive issue in China. (Indeed, imagery relating to government land-grabs led Chinese officials to stop showing versions of the film Avatar.)

But after studying these very issues in China in 2007 and 2008, I would caution readers that truly revolutionary turmoil from land disputes per se is highly unlikely.

These land disputes occur in times of economic plenty, when companies are looking to expand their operations out of cities into surrounding villages. Landless peasants are not highly destabilizing when the economy is good and they can find jobs in cities.

I would flip around Garnaut’s point: in economic hard times, land disputes are likely to become much less common as corrupt local officials have much less to gain from them; but the products of earlier land grabs–landless peasants–could prove to be a destabilizing force.

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