THE IMPACT OF PROPERTY PRICES ON INCIDENTS OF FORCED EVICTION IN CHINA

Abstract

Forced evictions have become a common phenomenon and a major cause of violence incidents in China. The struggle of the Chinese property owners on the issue of land acquisition and forced eviction goes beyond the comprehension of those living outside China. Since statistics relating to incidents of forced eviction are not publicly available, the data set used in this dissertation is formed by collecting cases of forced eviction reported on all publicly available channels. This dissertation aims to identify the general trends of forced eviction across time and geographical space. It has been observed that the numbers of reported forced eviction exhibited an overall increasing trend with a cyclical pattern with most cases being reported at the last quarter of the year. In terms of geographic distribution, the occurrence of forced eviction appeared to concentrate in provinces located within the Pearl River Delta Region and Yangzi River Delta Region. At city level, most cases of forced evictions are being reported in the capital city and provincial capital cities. This may indicate a positive relationship exists between a city’s level of economic development and the likelihood of forced eviction occurrence. Urban redevelopment and the provision of infrastructure are found to be the most cited intended purposes for land acquisition that has resulted in the forced eviction of property owners. Lastly this dissertation also showed that the increase of property prices correlate with the rise of forced eviction using a multivariate Ordinary Least Square (OLS) regression model. A positive correlation exists between property prices and occurrences of forced eviction at prefectural city level, after controlling for Gross Domestic Product (GDP) per capita and population density.