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Shareholding Cooperatives (SCs) are the officially recognised organisations responsible for managing villagers’ collectively owned assets. In recent years, massive land requisitions in the Pearl River Delta region have led many villages to experience a rapid expansion in their collective assets, highlighting the indispensable role of SCs in reshaping the landscape of local governance. Based upon an in-depth case study of the Guangzhou Luogang District, this study shows that the local state has engaged with shareholding reforms to achieve two main objectives: inducing compliance amongst villagers and promoting the accountability of village cadres in the management of collective assets. These empirical findings suggest that shareholding reforms were not simply a process of market building or property rights reforms driven by local initiatives. Rather, they should also be interpreted as a process of state power reconsolidation, whereby the local government sought to regain its control over the urbanising villages. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

China’s rapid urbanisation has prompted its government to explore new sustainable sources of public revenue to finance the continued demand for urban infrastructure and services. Property tax advocates have sought to take advantage of the real estate booms that have occurred since economic liberalisation by actively campaigning for a real property levy as an appropriate policy choice. Against this background, this study evaluates the prospect of implementing market-value-based property tax reforms in mainland China. Based on the new institutional economics perspective, it posits property tax as an institutional arrangement which requires complementary mechanisms in land registration, property appraisal, tax administration, social security and dispute resolution. Property tax reforms would not only necessitate technical changes, but would also have extensive social, political and legal repercussions for Chinese society. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]