Impacts on Rural Community Development and Governance by Different Land Ownership: A Comparative Study Based on Two Villages in China

Abstract

AbstractThe capability of rural community governance is significantly impacted by the different types of land ownership when capital investment in rural tourism to achieve rural revitalisation. The outcomes of which profoundly affect sustainable rural development. This study, by utilising a theoretical framework using double movement theory, aims to assess the impacts on rural community governance by two different land ownership models, the Enterprise-based Model (EBM) and the Community-based Model (CBM), in the process of capital flow to the countryside (CFC). Case studies of the two villages were adopted to examine and explore the logic of interaction between stakeholders and reveal the internal mechanism of rural community governance. The results of this research indicate that the CBM has considerable advantages over the EBM. In the CBM, the village collective retains land ownership without fully marketising, which allows villagers to maintain their bargaining power with investors whilst increasing their local awareness. In the EBM, however, the local government promotes the conversion of land ownership. The villagers benefit more from one-time acquisition but lose sustainable benefits created by local development. Stakeholders call for the need to create a development model beyond the market economy by maintaining China's rural land system in the process of CFC. In this regard, this paper provides an original contribution.