Negotiating Rural Land Ownership in Southwest China offers the first comprehensive analysis of how China's current system of land ownership has evolved over the past six decades. Based on extended fieldwork in Yunnan Province, the author explores how the three major rural actors--local governments, village communities, and rural households--have contested and negotiated land rights at the grassroots level, thereby transforming the structure of rural land ownership in the People's Republic of China.

At least two million rural settlements (or "natural villages") are estimated to exist...