Will restricting rural land expropriation reduce rural land value capture? Local government strategies through the lens of policy instruments

The practice of land value capture (LVC) from collectively owned rural land is undergoing changes in rural land marketisation as local governments are constrained in their power to expropriate rural land. Previous studies have either overestimated short-term rural LVC losses or exaggerated long-term urban LVC increases, while generally neglecting long-term rural LVC changes. Here, we present an analytical framework via the prism of policy instruments to make sense of the evolving practice of rural LVC. Our empirical evidence from China considers disparities in practice and outcomes across scales of governance and between inland–coastal and urban–rural settings, based on 145 semi-structured interviews from 430 transaction cases. We offer insight into discussions concerning stakeholder relationships in rural LVC. This article was published open access under a CC BY licence: https://creativecommons.org/licences/by/4.0 .