The Centre for Policy Research (CPR) and Centre de Sciences Humaines (CSH) invite you to a workshop on:
The Landlord State: Land Allocation as a Tool of Industrial Policy in China
Speaker: Saul Wilson, Assistant Professor, Department of Political Science, Ashoka University
Tuesday, 30 January 2024, 3:45 PM IST onwards. The event will be held in the CPR Conference room and online over Zoom.
About the Talk
States routinely intervene in the pricing and allocation of capital and labor when engaging in industrial policy. Drawing on evidence from China, where a landlord state imposed a state monopoly on urban land, this paper shows how interventions in the pricing and allocation of land can also be put into the service of industrial policy. Much like other tools of industrial policy, state pricing and allocation of land requires a strong state, manifested through state building efforts to impose control over land resources. In the case of China, these state building efforts spurred a broad growth coalition, spanning local governments, real estate developers, urban homeowners, and ultimately even peri-urban villagers; the political breadth of this growth coalition ultimately redirected the landlord state away from its industrial policy origins and towards frenetic real estate investment.
About the Speaker
Saul Wilson studies Chinese politics and urban politics. His research examines how China became addicted to land, showing how the Chinese state sought to establish itself as a monopolist “landlord state.” He has written on the politics of urban development and land property rights during China’s rapid urbanization. His broader research agenda explores municipal politics in China, seeking to understand how leadership and institutions have shaped local politics. You can read more about his research at http://www.saul-wilson.com/. He completed his Ph.D. in Government (2022) from Harvard, having previously received his S.B. in Mathematics and Asian & Asian Diaspora Studies (2014) and his S.M. in Urban Studies and Planning (2016) from MIT.
Find all the available videos of our previous workshops, here.
