Reterritorialize Properties through Law: Boundary Making of the Giant Panda National Park in China

Keywords: Territorialization, property, law, national park; boundary making, legal geography
Abstract Type: Virtual Paper Abstract

Abstract

No land is privately owned in China based on its constitution and land administration statute. Depending on the land use classification of being either urban or rural, different sets of legal relations would apply. Therefore, property regimes are intricately tied to rural-urban boundaries, which set the fundamental tone for these regimes. Boundary-making has become a pivotal instrument for the state to adjust property relations. Many studies have focused on the rapid urbanization turning rural land into urban construction use, while very few have noted the land property transformation in the rural setting. The delimitation of boundaries for the Giant Panda National Park is a contemporary practice encompassing rural villages, partially signaling a land transformation from collectively owned to nationally owned. Such change has multiple implications for the local villagers involved. The foremost one is a new suite of properties will be generated to cater to the Park’s objective of biodiversity conservation. Drawing on the expanding legal geography literature on properties qua social relations, I use the empirics of the Giant Panda National Park designation to demonstrate that boundary-making is a spatial practice, reinforcing the co-constitutive relationship between territory, properties, and law. Particular attention would be paid to the contested power relations revolving around delimiting the boundaries on the ground between the local state and concerned villagers. By doing so, this study also aims to complicate the mainstream discourse on the tensions between common and private properties by ushering in property relations without “classic” private property rights in a different setting.