From Peasants to Social Assistance Recipients? Semi-forced Urbanization in China

Forced and semi-forced resettlement is a re-occurring feature in both China and India where the establishment of infrastructure and urban zones have caused large-scale resettlement (Mertha 2008; Levien 2018; Pils 2016). This chapter studies the procedures of Forced and semi-forced resettlement in order to understand the logic of compensation and why this logic may have paved the way for more peaceful processes. Based on fieldwork around the mega-city Chengdu in Southwestern China, the chapter argues that compensation works more as a social right for those in communities already eligible for social welfare than as a market-based compensation reflecting the property’s value for developers. Thus, it is predominantly citizenship and the state’s conception of what the function of the housing in question was prior to its demolition that determines the amount and type of compensation.