suffered. Rural development has been de- prioritised and peri-urban villagers have been expected to assume some of the costs of urban expansion. Entitlement to scarce public goods, such as education, housing, healthcare and employment, has been exclusively of- fered to urban residents, adding to the relative Property Rights Redistribution, Entitlement Failure and the Impoverishment of Landless Farmers in China Shenjing He, Yuting Liu, Chris Webster and Fulong Wu [Paper first received, October 2007; in final form, July 2008] Abstract Within the process of urban expansion through land requisition in China, farmers’ de facto rights to collective land, including farmland and housing plots (zhaijidi), are forcibly acquired by the state and thereafter redistributed to private developers, to facilitate urban-based economic growth. Deprived of a secure livelihood, some land- less farmers become trapped in poverty. Others find that the property rights restructuring in urbanised villages gives them an opportunity to earn rental income. However, the opportunities are not equally distributed and the processes are, in general, stacked against the interests of villagers. This paper analyses the impoverishment of farmers caught up in China’s relentless urban expansion programme, using the perspectives of property rights and entitlements. It presents case studies of two villages in Xi’an to illustrate how farmers’ entitlement sets and vulnerability to poverty have changed as a result of changes in land rights. 1. Introduction China’s urban–rural household registration system (hukou) has resulted in an urban– rural dichotomy and uneven development. Since priority has been given to urban- based economic development, farmers have 0042-0980 Print/1360-063X Online © 2009 Urban Studies Journal Limited DOI: 10.1177/0042098009106015 Shenjing He is in the Department of Urban and Regional Planning, Sun Yat-Sen University, Guangzhou, 510275, China. E-mail: shenjing.he@gmail.com. Yuting Liu is in the School of Architecture, South China University of Technology, Guangzhou, 510641, China. E-mail: ytliu@scut.edu.cn. Chris Webster and Fulong Wu are in the School of City and Regional Planning, University of Cardiff, Glamorgan Building, King Edward VII Avenue, Cardiff, CF10 3WA, UK. E-mail: webster@cardiff.ac.uk and WuF@cardiff.ac.uk. 46(9) 1925–1949, August 2009 at University of Hong Kong Libraries on February 22, 2015 usj.sagepub.com Downloaded from