Family or Money? The False Dilemma in Property Dispossession in Shanghai

Abstract

This article examines the lived experiences of property dispossession caused by the World Expo 2010 in Shanghai. Specifically, it examines the category of the family, which is overlooked in the existing literature, and probes into the political production of family conflicts and breakdowns. It characterizes the prevailing regime of dispossession in contemporary China as decentralized legal authoritarianism and argues that the organization of the Expo‐induced dispossession deviated from this because of the distinctive state structures involved. For this reason, tensions within the state apparatus were temporarily suspended, leading to reduced opportunity for resistance. The state's monopoly of symbolic production rendered contesting claims to property ownership illegitimate and made monetary compensation the only option. This turned confrontation with the state into domestic disputes. Organized as a state‐led project, dispossession also exploited displacees' past experiences of a ‘caring' state or state terror, giving rise to different attitudes towards displacement and thus causing more family disputes. Moreover, mobilization of the entire state apparatus also permitted the use of coercive and violent means without legal and moral concerns. Tactics that manipulated, and in some cases completely severed, relations within and beyond the displaced families are explored in depth. The article concludes with a call to change the ways that dispossession has been conceived and conducted in practice.

Accumulation without Dispossession? Land Commodification and Rent Extraction in Peri‐urban China

“…The holdout households were taken to court by the village shareholding company and compulsorily evicted. These developments support observations of how the deployment of market means and economic inducements may serve to individualize and fragment rural society during redevelopment processes, and undermine the social basis for collective action (Chuang, ; Levien, ; Zhang, ).…”

“…Drawing on the notion of ‘value grabbing’ (Andreucci et al ., ), it is shown that the unequal distribution of value appropriated from land amongst the classes of actors involved in land development provides the basis for a new kind of contentious politics. In theorizing the new mechanisms by which accumulation by dispossession is unfolding on the fringes of Chinese cities, this article seeks both to deepen understandings of land politics and accumulation strategies in contemporary China and to contribute to the literature on urbanization and dispossession in the global South (Levien, ; Gillespie, ; Shin, ; Mbiba, ; Zhang, ).…”

In‐Situ Marginalisation: Social Impact of Chinese Mega‐Projects

“…The relocation of millions of residents and forced evictions have been highlighted by many studies as major social problems of China’s mega developments (Hsing ; Jiang et al ; Shin ; Zhang , ). However, through the case of Neighbourhood No.57, we find that the biggest social problem in Lingang is in‐situ marginalisation whereby residents, who have not been relocated, suffer from declining public services and environmental quality due to nearby industrial activities.…”

“…However, increasingly more studies express doubt that the concept of neoliberalisation is suited to explain the Chinese urban development process (Wu ; Wu and Phelps ). In China, large‐scale displacement and forced evictions from mega developments such as the Shanghai Expo or the Beijing 2008 Olympic games continue to be of great concern (Shin ; Zhang ). Land expropriation has displaced millions of residents in order to make space for new developments (Shin ; Wu et al ).…”

The state project of crisis management: China’s Shantytown Redevelopment Schemes under state-led financialization

“…As a key vehicle for spatialized capital accumulation, urban redevelopment in pursuit of short-term profit has led to widespread and relentless displacement, forced demolition and social-spatial marginalization in Chinese cities (He, 2012; He and Lin, 2015; Zhang, 2017). This led to a rise in social conflict and resistance in the late 2000s, threatening the legitimacy of the ruling party.…”