Includes bibliographical references and index.

Part I. Theorizing land disputes in socialist Asia -- 1. Resolving land disputes in East Asia: exploring the limits of law / John Gillespie and Hualing Fu -- 2. Property rights, commodification, and land disputes in contemporary Socialist Asia / Frank Upham -- Part II. China case studies -- 3. Legal and institutional analysis of land expropriation in China / Lei Chan -- 4. The judicial role in land-taking cases / Jie Cheng -- 5. Contending conceptions of ownership and property in urbanizing China / Elva Pils -- 6. What does Wukan offer? Land-taking, law, and dispute resolution / Hualing Fu -- 7. Protest-supported housing demolition litigation and social change in China / Xin He -- 8. Courts and political stability: mediating rural land disputes / Susan Whiting and Hau Shao -- 9. Power and rule by law in rural China: state-initiated mediation in land disputes / Changdon Zhang and Christopher Heurlin -- Part III. Vietnam case studies -- 10. An historical overview of Vietnamese land law and dispute resolution / Toan Le and Nguyen Hung Quang -- 11. Narrating land disputes in three Vietnamese communities / John Gillespie -- Part IV. Taiwan case studies -- 12. An overview of Taiwanese land law and dispute resolution / Po-Fang Tsai and Duan Lin -- 13. Customary law and modern society: land disputes of Jisigongye (ancestral worship property) in Taiwan / Duan Lin and Po-Fang Tsai -- Part V. Hong Kong case studies -- 14. An overview of Hong Kong land law and dispute resolution / Say H. Goo -- 15. The small house policy and Tso and Tong land: finding the interface between state and customary land in Hong Kong / Say H. Goo -- 16. Flexibly applying the law to regulate illegal buildings in Hong Kong / Alice Lee.

"Economic development and mass urbanization have unleashed unprecedented levels of land disputes in East Asia. In China and Vietnam especially, courts and other legal institutions struggle to find lasting solutions. It is against this background of legal failure that this book brings together leading scholars to understand how state agencies, land users and land developers imaginatively engage with each other to resolve disputes. Drawing on empirically rich case studies, contributors explore the limits of law and legal institutions in resolving land disputes and reveal insights into how key actors in East Asia understand land disputes. Their studies reveal promising dispute resolution practices and point to the likely ways that states will deal with land disputes in the future"-- Provided by publisher.