Nanjing was handpicked by Sun Yat-sen, the provisional president of the Republic of China, as the national capital in 1911 following the collapse of the imperial Qing Empire. Nevertheless, it quickly lost its capital status to Beijing when the provisional government lost its power to the warlords of the North, who intended to restore an authoritarian regime in China. It was not until the Nationalist Party (Kuomintang or Guomindang), founded by Sun Yat-sen in Guangdong, launched an expedition to North China and regained control of the country in 1927 that Nanjing was restored as the national capital. Nationalist leaders were determined to transform Nanjing into a modern capital that would be more prosperous than London, Paris or New York, even though China was under financial strain. Importantly, they argued that China could only be regarded as a first-rate nation if its capital became the best city in the world.Footnote 1 Nevertheless, the extensive reconstruction of Nanjing, under an overarching planning project called the ‘Capital Plan’ (Shoudu jihua), was carried out at the expense of common people's homes. Private land was seized for the implementation of the plan, a major part of which involved the construction of Parisian ‘Haussmann-style’ boulevards.Footnote 2
This article focuses on the conflicts between landowners and the Nationalist government over the compulsory expropriation of land for the implementation of the Capital Plan during the so-called ‘Nanjing decade’, which refers to the period after the Nationalist government settled in Nanjing (1927) and before the outbreak of the Sino-Japanese War (1937). The main objective of this article is to understand how China's Nationalist government used ‘public interest’ (gonggong liyi) as a reason for expropriating common people's property. When its power to seize private land was challenged by opponents, Nationalist leaders shifted the emphasis from ‘public interest’ to ‘public obligation’ (gonggong zeren or shimin zeren), claiming that all Nanjing citizens had a duty to support the capital's urban development. Furthermore, they stigmatized opponents as short-sighted and selfish for obstructing the capital's reconstruction and modernization. In so doing, the Nationalist government used ‘public interest’ and ‘public obligation’ both to justify city planning and to assert the principles governing the conduct of urban citizens. This article discusses not only how the Nationalist government established discourses of public interest and public obligation, but also how it turned these discourses into modern laws and practices. To provide a legal basis for land expropriation, the Nationalist government formulated the Land Expropriation Act and Land Law in 1928 and 1930, respectively. This article traces the Nationalist land system to Sun Yat-sen's ‘equalization of land rights’ (pingjun diquan) theory, which was inspired by Henry George's unearned increment argument.
In the mid-nineteenth century, many countries began making new plans for their capitals to express new ideas of modern nationhood. This competition to construct the most magnificent capitals began with Haussmann's Paris, and spread to Vienna, Rome, Berlin, Washington, Ankara and so forth. Although we admire the splendour of these capitals and their importance to the history of city planning, the considerable time taken to implement these grand urban schemes has often been neglected.Footnote 3 What is missing in current scholarship are the ways in which such massive spatial restructuring was actually carried out in these capital cities. A similar knowledge gap can be found in the study of urban history in twentieth-century China. Earlier studies of the urban reconstruction of Nanjing have often focused on the political meaning of the Capital Plan and western influences on its planning and architectural design.Footnote 4 Recently, scholars have begun to focus on the complex politics involved in the planning process, the power battle between different sections of the Nationalist government and the shortcomings and setbacks of the Capital Plan.Footnote 5 Nevertheless, the Capital Plan's actual implementation and impact on the local populace remain poorly understood and in need of further research.
During the long process of implementing the Capital Plan and the construction of new boulevards, the expropriation of private land in the name of public interest became a major cause of social discontent in Nanjing. Although several studies have been undertaken regarding Nationalist land policy, most have focused on the period after 1949, when the Nationalist government retreated to Taiwan and reformed farmland ownership there.Footnote 6 However, the development of the modern land system during the Nanjing decade is often overlooked and under-theorized. An important historical source on the subject is the field investigative reports made in the 1930s by the College of Land Economics (Dizheng xueyuan) under the Central School of Governance (Zhongyang zhengzhi xuexiao) in Nanjing.Footnote 7 Founded in 1932 by Xiao Zheng and Chen Guofu, the college sent out researchers to investigate land politics and administration in various parts of China. The 166 investigative reports were later edited by Xiao Zheng into a series called Materials on the Land Problem of 1920s China.Footnote 8
In addition to the investigative reports of the College of Land Economics, various historical sources were consulted for this article. Most of the information related to Nanjing's reconstruction and land policies came from official publications and the reports of various governmental departments. Among all these official publications, the City Administration Weekly (Shoudu shizheng zhoukan), a newsletter targeting a public audience, was the key source of propaganda regarding the capital's reconstruction. Published every week in one of the most popular newspapers, Shen Bao, the newsletter included reports on the progress of various public works and communications from government leaders. This article also examines the details of the land disputes, which were documented in various correspondences between landowners and the authorities, kept in the Second Historical Archives of China and the Nanjing Municipal Archives. The reactions of the Nanjing inhabitants towards compulsory land seizure were reported in various newspapers and popular magazines, such as Shen Bao, Shi Bao, The North China Herald, Daolu Yuekan and Jianyue Zhoukan.
The public interest and modern citizenship
During the Nationalist period, the compulsory expropriation of land was carried out in the name of public interest. Although the term ‘public interest’ is often used in legal and political discourse in western societies, it has rarely been defined clearly. Some scholars believe that public interest means the majority's interest. If a decision serves the ends of the entire public rather than only some sectors of society, it can be considered to be in the public interest.Footnote 9 Other scholars consider public interest as equivalent to common interest, shared by everyone.Footnote 10 However, in cases that involve controversial subjects such as class, gender and race, it can be difficult to find a common ground shared by all members of a given society.Footnote 11 The British philosopher Jeremy Bentham argues instead that public interest is ‘the sum of the interests of the several members who compose it’.Footnote 12 This understanding of public interest, however, is rejected by scholars like John Rawls, who argue that the interests of two distinct persons cannot be meaningfully counted together, because doing so entails treating a group of many as if it were a single sentient entity.Footnote 13
Common definitions of the public interest – as the majority's interest, the common interest or the summation of individual interests – are all problematic. Curiously, however, although it seems impossible to provide a substantive definition of public interest, this term persists in political discourse and policy-making in western societies. Some scholars thus argue that the primary function of the concept of public interest is to convey approval or commendation of public policy. Public interest provides a standard for the modern state to assign rights and duties or make authoritative decisions.Footnote 14
In China, the idea of public interest, or public good, was introduced by intellectuals, political reformers and revolutionaries during the Qing period as a vehicle for reforming imperial China into a nation-state that could survive in the modern world.Footnote 15 Wu Huanyu suggested that the Chinese term ‘gongyi’ (a shortened phrase for gongong liyi) was adopted by the missionary William A.P. Martin in 1863 in his Chinese translation of Henry Wheaton's Elements of International Law to reflect the western ideas of ‘the general interest’ and ‘the general welfare’.Footnote 16 In 1865, Kaiseisho (the official school of the Tokugawa government) translated Martin's Chinese version of Elements of International Law into Japanese, and after that, Japan began to use the Chinese phrase gongyi as a translation of western legal terms such as ‘utilitas publica’, ‘public interest’ and ‘public benefit’.Footnote 17 Subsequently, this usage was brought back into China by Huang Zunxian in his The Records of the State of Japan (Riben guozhi), which is a series of books published in 1887 on Japan's culture, geography, governmental structure, laws and so on.Footnote 18 Huang's book exerted a considerable influence on Chinese reformers, such as Kang Youwei and Liang Qichao, who were interested in the new way of thinking of the Meiji Restoration in Japan at the time.
Chinese reformers were critical of how Confucianism, the backbone of Chinese culture, valued hierarchical relations between individuals (such as between fathers and sons, husbands and wives, rulers and subjects) but overlooked the individual's sense of responsibility to society. Liang Qichao, for instance, characterized the Chinese emphasis on dyadic relations as ‘private morality’ (si de).Footnote 19 He and many Chinese reformers believed that the absence of public-mindedness in Chinese tradition led to the fall of the imperial government.Footnote 20 They thus sought to create a new ethical system for the future nation-state, one that emphasized a person's duty in the public sphere – a new ‘public morality’ (gong de) in Liang's words. They believed that celebrating the public spirit, collective interest and self-rule could be an antidote to private selfishness in an era of declining central government.
The promotion of public over private interest continued from the late Qing to the Nationalist period and became a source of political legitimacy. Public-mindedness became an essential quality of shimin, a Chinese translation of ‘urban citizens’ or ‘city people’. Goldman and Perry remark that the term shimin has figured prominently in the discourse of political activism in modern China articulated by urban reformers, who sought a new form of municipal governance characterized by self-rule. Shimin indicates a new form of community membership, allowing a person to claim the public rights and obligations associated with urban residency in the modern nation-state.Footnote 21
The discursive production of public interest and public obligation
Many Nationalist leaders were technocrats who had the ambition to modernize Chinese cities based on up-to-date planning principles adopted from the west. Sun Yat-sen, for instance, advocated fervently for a national policy of urban reconstruction to spearhead China's development.Footnote 22 Guangzhou, where the power of the Nationalist Party was based, was the vanguard of urban experiments.Footnote 23 Sun Ke, son of Sun Yat-sen, assumed the mayoralty of Guangzhou in 1921 and started the reconstruction of the city by demolishing city walls and widening roads. In 1927, Sun Ke and his fellow administrators developed a blueprint for Guangzhou, which featured wide boulevards radiating from a civic centre with splendid buildings.Footnote 24 Although the plan could not be materialized due to economic and political uncertainties, it provided an excellent example to the Nationalist leadership of what a modern Chinese city could become.
In 1927, the Nationalist leadership selected Nanjing as the new national capital, but they were troubled by the city's dilapidated appearance after years of wars and uprisings: its roads were narrow and rugged, there were shanties everywhere, many houses had collapsed and once-grand architectural sites, such as the Palace of the Ming Dynasty, were mere ruins. On numerous occasions, Chiang Kai-shek, chairman of the Nationalist government, had personally ordered the eradication of roadside slums to maintain the good appearance of the capital.Footnote 25 Therefore, the reconstruction of Nanjing commenced immediately after it became the national capital in the summer of 1927. At that time, the construction of a mausoleum for Sun Yat-sen, the late provisional president of the Republic, was already underway on Purple Mountain to the east of the city. Upon completion of the mausoleum, the Nationalist government planned to hold a national funeral, which would begin with a parade of Sun Yat-sen's casket through Nanjing. Accordingly, the government planned the 40-foot wide Zhonghan Avenue, beginning at the pier at the Yangtze River and cutting through the heart of Nanjing all the way east to the Sun Yat-sen Mausoleum. Resembling the Parisian boulevards, this tree-lined road also formed the backbone of a new, elaborate network (Figure 1). In addition to extensive road construction and road-widening efforts, other infrastructure projects – including a modern port, two train terminals and four airports – were planned for Nanjing under the Capital Plan (Figure 2). Modern utilities such as electricity, streetlights, drinking water, drainage and sewers would also be installed in the capital. All these efforts aimed to transform Nanjing in a short span of time.
Figure 1. Map showing the proposed road network under the Capital Plan. The backbone of the road network was the Zhongshan Avenue, which connected the pier at the Yangtze River all the way through the city centre to the Sun Yat-sen Mausoleum on the Purple Mountain.
Source: Redrawn following Shoudu Jihua [Capital Plan], figure 21.
Figure 2. Image showing the future of Nanjing under the Capital Plan.
Source: Shoudu Jihua [Capital Plan], figure 44.
The replanning of Nanjing was a costly process. The construction of Zhongshan Avenue alone demanded the relocation of 497 households and the expropriation of 19,646 square zhang of land (approx. 182,517 square metres), of which almost 78 per cent was privately owned.Footnote 26 Many of the affected inhabitants were owners of small shops and workshops, as Zhongshan Avenue and its associated new road networks were planned to cross the busiest part of Nanjing. The Nobel laureate Pearl S. Buck also addressed the compulsory land seizure in her short story, ‘The new road’, which described the grief and anger of a man whose shop was destroyed by the Nanjing municipal government to make way for a new road.Footnote 27
He Minhun, the mayor of Nanjing, proclaimed that the destruction of the old was an unavoidable step in the making of a new national capital. He stressed that ‘[if] we can endure a short period of bitterness and sacrifice, then afterwards [we will] enjoy the long-lasting benefits of this reconstruction’.Footnote 28 Such assertions, however, did not appease those who lost their homes. Over 2,000 affected families demanded that the government re-route Zhongshan Avenue to a less-crowded area to minimize the extent of expropriations.Footnote 29 The Nanjing Merchants’ Association also publicly criticized the municipal government for giving unreasonably short notice to affected inhabitants ‘without mentioning the amount of compensation, making people doubt [the government]’.Footnote 30 The association, therefore, requested that the government redirect Zhongshan Avenue, give landowners reasonable compensation and provide adequate time for relocation. These requests, however, were neglected by the municipal government.
To ease the tension between the authorities and the population, the Nanjing municipal government launched a propaganda campaign to promote the new road works. A major event in the campaign was the ‘municipal administration propaganda week’ (shizheng xuanchuanzhou) held in March 1928. During this week, the government mobilized 10 propaganda teams to convey the importance of capital reconstruction to the people of Nanjing. Simultaneously, a number of state officials gave public talks and radio broadcasts in support of the capital's reconstruction.Footnote 31 The government also published a series of newsletters to promote the new planning schemes. The most notable example was Capital Administration Weekly (Shoudu shizheng zhoukan), published in Shen Bao from January 1928 to August 1929.
In all of these public talks, radio broadcasts and publications, one consistent message appeared: the obligation of urban citizens (shimin zeren). The Nationalist leaders who delivered these speeches stated two rationales for this obligation. First, the citizens of Nanjing were to blame for the capital's poor appearance. The director of the Municipal Public Works Bureau, for instance, attributed Nanjing's dilapidation to the selfish behaviour of citizens: squatting on public land, erecting illegal structures on public roads, stealing electricity, travelling by bus without buying tickets and so forth. He also claimed that they had no sense of hygiene, casually throwing garbage into the streets and rivers and causing outbreaks of disease.Footnote 32 In his opinion, the Nanjing citizenry had an obligation to maintain the good appearance of the capital.
Second, citizens should support public works because they would benefit from them. In a meeting with local residents concerning a road-widening project, Mayor He Minhun urged them to co-operate with the authorities because their land would increase in value. His speech shifted the role of landowners from victims of compulsory land seizure to beneficiaries of increased traffic and the booming land market:
I hope all comrades who are here today will try your best to propagandize to your friends and relatives living here, to ask them to care about the public interest. For when they sacrifice 70 feet of land, they still have 30 feet remaining. The value of this 30 feet of land in the future, due to the convenient traffic and the booming market, will be more than that of the 100 feet of land today.Footnote 33
The Nanjing municipal government declared publicly that it would not terminate the new road works due to the misunderstanding of a small group of people, who were short-sighted and failed to understand the long-term benefits this project would bring to them and the city.Footnote 34 Other Nationalist leaders also criticized the opposing landowners by asserting that they had instigated others to protest against the road works. They declared that these opponents ‘cared about their private interests but were not concerned about the public [interest]’:
They rely on the power of their capital and property, indulging themselves to do whatever they want and exploiting the common people. Their acts were the epitome of corruption, bullying, and ugliness. Now they still do not want to repent…They still practice these evil measures to obstruct the great plan of construction. They are really the public enemy of the whole city's masses. People should not forgive them, and the municipal government should punish them following the people's will.Footnote 35
Nationalist leaders often used negative phrases such as ‘corruption’, ‘bullying’ and ‘evil measures’ to stigmatize opposition landowners, labelling them ‘the public enemy of all people’ and urging the municipal government to punish them. One state official, Ye Chucang, even called the petitioners ‘remnants of the feudal regime’, implying that they were backward and out of step with the new regime. In a public speech entitled ‘Obligations of urban residents’ (Shimin de zeren), Ye complained, ‘I very much doubt [the intention of these] Nanjing citizens…they form groups to oppose the demolition of houses. They said, “the houses are still good, why tear them down?”…These simple-minded people hold on to feudal thoughts and hinder city administration.’ Ye further commented, ‘It is so easy to transform the urban artefacts inherited [from the imperial era], yet it is so difficult to transform the mentality of the remnants.’ Hence, he urged the government to ignore residents opposed to the reconstruction and ‘finish the job with courage’.Footnote 36
The tension between the government and the citizens of Nanjing grew after Liu Jiwen, a keen supporter of the reconstruction, replaced He Minhun as the mayor of Nanjing in August 1928. Mayor Liu proposed the expropriation of all land within 60 metres of the edges of the new Zhongshan Avenue.Footnote 37 He foresaw that land prices would substantially increase upon the completion of the avenue and suggested expropriating the land when the price was still low so that the state could profit from it in the future.
Mayor Liu's 60-metre expropriation proposal was soon the subject of fierce attacks from the media and the people of Nanjing. For example, 1,327 affected inhabitants sent a lengthy petition to the Executive Yuan of the Nationalist government opposing the extensive land seizure for the construction of Zhongshan Avenue. They also complained about the meagre compensation, which was insufficient for them to hire workers to demolish their houses, not to mention rebuild their houses elsewhere. The petitioners were so angry that they publicly demanded that the Nationalist government remove Mayor Liu from office.Footnote 38 In response to this serious opposition, Mayor Liu finally abandoned the 60-metre expropriation proposal, but in doing so, claimed that compulsory expropriation was in the interest not of the government but of the public.Footnote 39 He commented that the petitioners lacked a broad vision and could not see the long-term benefit of capital reconstruction. ‘One who cannot endure a short pain will not be able to enjoy everlasting happiness’, the mayor argued, ‘and to pursue the interest of the majority, it is impossible not to sacrifice the interest of the minority.’Footnote 40 Therefore, Mayor Liu insisted that the government should not stop the capital reconstruction simply because of ‘the pain of a small number of people’.Footnote 41
Nationalist leaders intertwined public interest and public obligation in their arguments: because the urban projects were developed in the public interest, the public was obligated to support them and also the necessary land expropriation. Pursuing the long-term public interest, state officials argued, necessarily involved sacrificing the interests of a small group of people. Those who opposed the land seizure were stigmatized by the state as anti-development and as damaging the public interest; the miserable evictees were portrayed as profiteers attempting to take advantage of the state. In so doing, the state turned the discursive focus from public interest to public obligation.
Equalization of land rights: theoretical underpinnings of the Nationalist land laws
Due to the fierce resistance of the Nanjing citizenry, the Nationalist leadership found it necessary to establish a legal ground for compulsory land expropriation and other land-related matters. They adopted the theory of the equalization of land rights proposed by the late Sun Yat-sen. Influenced by his social and intellectual experiences during his two-year sojourn in Europe (1896–98), Sun believed that the greatest problems that had emerged in the west were fluctuations in land value and land squabbles resulting from capitalist development.Footnote 42 After returning to China, Sun began to formulate a theory of the equalization of land rights based on the unearned increment argument of the American political economist Henry George.Footnote 43 In Progress and Poverty, Henry George asserted that the root cause of poverty was the land monopoly of individuals, because ‘with [an] increase in productive power, rent tends to even greater increase, thus producing a constant tendency to the forcing down of wages’.Footnote 44 Consequently, landowners extorted the hard-earned income of labourers in the form of rent. To alleviate poverty, George proposed confiscating rent increases through taxation.Footnote 45 He argued that increases in rent were generated by social evolution without expenditures of any kind on the part of the landowners, and that this ‘unearned increment’ should thus revert to society.
Inspired by Henry George, Sun developed the idea of the equalization of land rights in 1905 as part of his grand scheme to reform China. Equalizing land rights involved four steps: (1) self-assessment of land values, (2) land taxation according to the declared values, (3) state purchase of private land according to the declared value and (4) confiscation of the unearned increment.Footnote 46 In sum, this method required a landowner to self-assess and declare the value of his land; this value would then form the basis of a land tax. If the land's value rose in the future, the state would confiscate the unearned increment in land value. Concurrently, the state reserved the right to purchase private land based on the declared land value. This two-part measure ensured that the declared value would be neither too low nor too high:
For example, if a landlord has land worth 1,000 dollars, its price can be set at 1,000 or even 2,000 dollars. Perhaps in the future, after the traffic has been improved, the value of his land will rise to 10,000 dollars; the owners should receive 2,000, which entails a profit and no loss, and the 8,000 increments will go to the state. Such an arrangement will greatly benefit both the state and the people's livelihood. Naturally, it will also eliminate the shortcomings that have permitted a few rich people to monopolize wealth.Footnote 47
Two major components of the equalization of land rights theory provided the underpinnings for the Nationalist land laws. First, it allowed the state to purchase private land based on its declared value. Sun claimed that ‘When necessary, the state may buy land according to the value reported by the owner.’Footnote 48 He explained that not all land should be owned by the state, only those lands that were needed for public works.Footnote 49 In this sense, Sun granted the state the right and power to expropriate private property lawfully in the name of public interest.
Second, the equalization of land rights theory allowed for the expropriation of unearned increments. Like Henry George, Sun Yat-sen argued that the people made an effort to improve the community, and that the improved environment caused land prices to rise in return. Therefore, an increase in value was the result of social reform and progress rather than a contribution from the landowners; it was an unearned increment and should belong to society and be enjoyed by all.
Based on the equalization of land rights theory, the Nationalist government and the Nanjing municipal government respectively issued the Land Expropriation Act (Tudi zhengshou fa) and Nanjing Special Municipal Government Land Expropriation Regulation (Nanjing tebieshi shizhengfu tudi zhengshou zhangcheng) in summer 1928. These laws formally empowered the Nationalist state to expropriate land for the development of public works, which were defined as undertakings related to public buildings; communication and transportation projects; port facilities; public health facilities; improvement projects in villages and towns; water conservancy; educational, academic and charitable institutions; state-owned enterprises; and defence and military installations. The laws also included an ambiguous category called ‘other undertakings for public uses’, which gave the authorities flexibility in interpreting the nature of public works. Records show that from January 1928 to June 1932, the Nanjing municipal government carried out 141 land expropriations along Zhongshan Avenue. The construction of public buildings and the development of communication and transportation infrastructure were the most frequently cited reasons for land requisition (Table 1).
Table 1. Purposes of land requisition along Zhongshan Avenue from January 1928 to June 1932
Source: Liu, ‘Nanjingshi tudi zhengshou zhi yanju’ [Study on the land requisition of Nanjing], 49615.
To ensure that the unearned increment of land value would revert to the public, the Nationalist government endorsed the Principles of Land Law (Tudi fa yuanze) and Land Law (Tudi fa) in 1929 and 1930, respectively. Following Sun Yat-sen's ‘equalization of land rights’ theory, these laws required landowners to self-declare their land's value, which would be used to determine the amount of taxes paid on land value increments and the land price for the state's compulsory purchase. The land value increment tax would be collected after 15 years of ownership or at the time of ownership transfer, and would be based on the total increased value of the land calculated according to a multiple progressive tax rate.
Although a legal basis for compulsory expropriation was established, the new laws had a major loophole as they failed to specify which state agencies and organizations should have the power to seize land. In the capital, many ministries and government agencies needed land to construct their offices and facilities. Some of them had expropriated common people's homes but failed to compensate the affected landowners, despite repeated complaints from the Office of Technical Experts for Capital Design (Guodou sheji jishu zhuanyuan banshichu), the government agency in charge of the Capital Plan. They also took advantage of the vague definition of the term ‘public interest’ and expropriated private land for the construction of employee dormitories. Upon the intervention of the Office of Technical Experts for Capital Design, the Nationalist government had to issue a formal clarification in September 1930, stating that the construction of state employee dormitories should not be considered as being in the ‘public interest’.Footnote 50
Inadequate compensation for land expropriation became another major source of conflict between the state and the people. In a report written in the 1930s, Liu Xiuqing, a scholar from the College of Land Economics, highlighted the inequalities in the estimates applied in land compensation. He pointed out that the compensation amount was determined by the Land Requisition Auditing Committee (Tudi zhengshou shencha weiyuanhui), which was dominated by state officials, who might care less about landowners’ interests.Footnote 51 As landowners could not object to compulsory expropriation, the government always gave minimal compensation. For example, when the municipal government expropriated land for the construction of Zhongshan Avenue in 1927, it compensated the landowners based on the much lower market price from 1926, before the land value was boosted by Nanjing's capital status.Footnote 52 The government's frequent delays in granting compensation due to inadequate funds made matters even worse. For example, land expropriation for the construction of a public park began in April 1928, but the compensation was not granted until September 1932. Likewise, the compensation for the construction of Zhongshan Avenue was delayed from winter 1928 to summer 1933, demonstrating poor enforcement of the Land Expropriation Act.Footnote 53 Furthermore, as the extensive land expropriation created a heavy financial burden on Nanjing, to save expenses, the expropriation laws allowed the Nanjing municipal government to substitute government bonds for up to 50 per cent of the compensation. Most landowners complained about this arrangement, as they desperately needed cash to rebuild their homes.
Those landowners who objected to expropriation or disagreed with the amount of compensation often pleaded for the intervention of the Nationalist government. For example, in 1930, the Nanjing municipal government wanted to develop a new plaza at a key location along the completed Zhongshan Avenue, but it failed to reach a consensus with the affected landowners on the amount of compensation. After studying the dispute, the Executive Yuan of the Nationalist government denied the landowners’ claim that the compensation was lower than the market value of the land, claiming that the land price of the area had risen only because the government had put in the effort to construct Zhongshan Avenue. Consequently, the landowners had already benefited from the increased land value, and their petition for higher compensation showed that they just ‘wanted to earn great profit without spending any effort’.Footnote 54 Such comments were consistent with Sun Yat-sen's notion that increased land value was an unearned increment that resulted from population increases and social improvements rather than from the contributions of landowners.
The formulation of the new land laws could not stop the conflicts between the Nanjing people and the government. For instance, in 1930, over 10,000 protestors distributed anti-expropriation flyers demanding to see Chiang Kai-shek, but Chiang refused.Footnote 55 In another case, hundreds of angry inhabitants affected by the construction of a train station in April 1935 surrounded a government district office and assaulted an officer there.Footnote 56 Incidents such as these were widely reported in the press and embarrassed the government. The North China Herald mocked: ‘If Dr. Sun [Yat-sen] could know of the thousands who have had their houses torn down by Liu Chi-wen [Liu Jiwen], Mayor of Nanking [Nanjing], with nothing but the most derisory compensation, so that many, we are told, are actually beggared, he would, as one Chinese put it to us, turn in his grave.’Footnote 57
Turning public obligation into practice: the public works levy
The reconstruction of Nanjing imposed a heavy financial burden on China. Nationalist leaders believed that Nanjing citizens should share the construction expenses. They argued that the public works had improved the city environment and benefited landowners. Therefore, Nanjing landowners were obligated to support these public works. A government official, Kong Xiangxi, cited New York and Chicago as examples and suggested imposing a construction levy on landowners who had benefited from the new road works.Footnote 58 His suggestion was, in fact, aligned with Sun Yat-sen's idea to revert the unearned increment of land value from landowners to society.
In August 1930, the Nanjing municipal government adopted the Nanjing Temporary Regulations on the Apportionment of Road Construction Cost (Nanjingshi zhulu tanfei zanhang guize), which applied to both new road construction and the widening of existing roads. According to the regulation, land on both sides of a new road would be divided into two zones: zone one was the area within 15 metres of the edges of the new road, and zone two was the area within 30 metres of the edges of zone one. Landowners in zone one had to share 50 per cent of the road works expenses (including construction costs, land costs and compensation to affected landowners), subject to a cap of 50 per cent of the value of their land. Likewise, landowners in zone two had to share the remaining 50 per cent of the expenses. Through this levy, the road works expenses were to be covered mostly, if not fully, by the landowners.
The regulation also empowered the state to engage in the compulsory purchase of private properties if landowners failed to pay the levy. However, for many landowners, the levy was entirely unaffordable. Taking the construction of Jiangkang Road as an example, the compensation for land was only 40 yuan per square zhang (equal to 100 square feet), but the construction levy was as high as 30.34 yuan per square zhang.Footnote 59 In some cases, the levy imposed was even more than the compensation received. Many landowners could not afford to pay the levy and had no choice but to sell their properties to the state. They complained that no one wanted to buy land in Nanjing any more because of the high levy.Footnote 60
Figure 3 is redrawn from a plan made in 1931 by the Municipal Land Bureau for the widening of Taiping Road.Footnote 61 It shows the land lot numbers, the area to be expropriated for the project and the boundaries of zones one and two under the cost apportionment regulation. Taking land lot no. 56 as an example, the landowner would be compensated for the part of his land expropriated by the government for road widening. At the same time, he had to pay the construction levy for the part of his land located in zones one and two. In another example, the landowner of lot no. 49 had to pay the construction levy even though his land did not directly abut the Taiping Road (Figure 3).
Figure 3. Map showing the road construction cost apportionment of Taiping Road.
Source: Redrawn following ‘Xinjiekou ji tangfangqiaolu tanfei huiyi jilu’ [Meeting minutes for the cost sharing of Xinjiekou and Tangfangqiao Road].
A group of residents living along Taiping Road who were unable to afford the levy petitioned the Nationalist government, but were denied a meeting with the officials in charge. The petitioners complained that the road cost apportionment policy in Nanjing duplicated the function of the land increment tax. They already had to revert any unearned increments of land value to the government by paying the land increment tax. Now they had to pay the road construction cost apportionment levy as well, which was another means of extracting the unearned increment of land value.Footnote 62 Such an arrangement fundamentally violated the laws that prevented double taxation in China. Due to the many complaints, the Nanjing municipal government had difficulty collecting the levy from landowners. Hence, the government prohibited landowners from selling their property until they had paid the levy.
Despite the negative response from citizens, the road construction cost apportionment policy was widely adopted not only in the capital but also in other Chinese cities such as Guangzhou and Hangzhou.Footnote 63 In 1937, the Nanjing municipal government formulated a series of new regulations to expand the levy to all types of public works, such as the construction of piers, bridges and dams; the provision of water supplies; and the improvement of traffic.Footnote 64 The regulations stipulated that 60 per cent of the total expenses for any public work should be apportioned among the landowners in the area. Again, the regulations empowered the government to enforce the compulsory purchase of private property if the landowners failed to pay the levy.
Conclusion
The pressing need to obtain land for capital reconstruction led directly to the formation of the modern land and property system. The Nationalist government developed the land system based on Sun Yat-sen's equalization of land rights theory. Sun Yat-sen's original intention was to eliminate land monopoly and land speculation, and thus eventually lead to social equality. In our case-study of Nanjing, however, no evidence suggests that the Nationalist government placed social equality high on its agenda when formulating and implementing the new land laws. Instead, random land requisitions, unjust compensation and high levies were common in Nanjing.
Facing severe opposition to the compulsory land seizure, the Nationalist government shifted the focus of public interest to public obligation: if an urban project was developed for public purposes, then the public should also be obligated to finance it. Based on this logic, the government imposed a levy on those who owned property along newly constructed roads. The levy was a modification of the expropriation of future increments of land value proposed by Henry George and Sun Yat-sen. The rationale for the levy was that any future increment of land value following social progress and urban development was the result of public efforts and should be returned to society. Landowners had no rights on the basis of which they could object to land expropriation or the road levy. Indeed, they were often stigmatized by officials as short-sighted and selfish in their obstruction of the capital's modernization. The discursive establishment of public interest and public obligation became an essential step in the Chinese practice of property governance.
