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The Landlord State: Land Allocation as a Tool of Industrial Policy in China

Saul Wilson

Politics and Society2025https://doi.org/10.1177/00323292241287038article
AJG 3ABDC B
Weight
0.37

What the paper says

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 article 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 banks and even peri-urban villagers; the political breadth of this growth coalition redirected the landlord state away from its industrial policy origins and toward frenetic real estate investment.

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https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.1177/00323292241287038

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@article{saul2025,
  title        = {{The Landlord State: Land Allocation as a Tool of Industrial Policy in China}},
  author       = {Saul Wilson},
  journal      = {Politics and Society},
  year         = {2025},
  doi          = {https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.1177/00323292241287038},
}

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The Landlord State: Land Allocation as a Tool of Industrial Policy in China

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Evidence weight

0.37

Balanced mode · F 0.40 / M 0.15 / V 0.05 / R 0.40

F · citation impact0.16 × 0.4 = 0.06
M · momentum0.53 × 0.15 = 0.08
V · venue signal0.50 × 0.05 = 0.03
R · text relevance †0.50 × 0.4 = 0.20

† Text relevance is estimated at 0.50 on the detail page — for your query’s actual relevance score, open this paper from a search result.