The emergence of the urban land market in China: Evolution, structure, constraints and perspectives

Urban land reform is one of the most important constituents of China's whole economic reform programme launched in the late 1970s. Through a series of reforms, urban land markets have emerged rapidly. This paper aims to analyse the evolution of urban land reform, to discuss the structure of urban land markets, to identify the principal constraints in the urban land market and to propose relevant recommendations for its improvement in the future. The methodology employed for this research is based on the structure and agency theory of the development process and the paper relies on a comprehensive review of recent research on the urban land market in China.