Displaced villagers’ adaptation in concentrated resettlement community: A case study of Nanjing, China

Land Use Policy 88 (2019) 104097

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Displaced villagers’ adaptation in concentrated resettlement community: A case study of Nanjing, China

T

Zhu Qian School of Planning, University of Waterloo, 200 University Avenue West, Waterloo, ON N2L 3G1, Canada

A R T I C LE I N FO

A B S T R A C T

Keywords: Displaced villagers Resettlement Adaptation Land acquisition China

This research examines the socioeconomic transformation and adaptation to urban life among resettled villagers who live in government-designated concentrated resettlement communities, by articulating the interrelated roles played by individual households, resettlement communities, the local state and the market. Principal component analysis and descriptive comparison were conducted to assess resettled villagers’ opinions on their economic, social, and environmental adaptations, based on 300 structured survey samples collected from two concentrated resettlement communities in Nanjing. The study argues that legacy from the past rural collective institution, rural land property rights ambiguity, and complicated interests in land conversion all contextualize villager resettlement and adaptation. Post-resettlement adaptation depends on specific geographical, environmental, and economic conditions. An approach open to resettled villagers’ opinions and concerns would help to achieve an equitable and sustainable realization of resettled villagers’ transformation and adaptation. The research urges that resettlement policy environment now faces two paradigm changes.

1. Introduction China’s ongoing economic reform and accelerated urbanization has generated a huge number of rural villagers living in cities. The country’s most recent National Urbanization Scheme (2014–2020) prioritizes three groups of rural villagers, each totaling about 100 million, in its ambitious urbanization strategy. The first group involves western rural villagers who will be resettled in nearby cities in western China. They may otherwise have migrated to the east coast. The second group concerns those rural villagers who live in informal settlements and urban villages in cities. The country will significantly improve their living conditions. The third group is resettled villagers in cities produced in the state-sponsored urbanization. These three groups have formed the major pillars of China’s people-oriented urbanization plan with the intention to convert rural peasants to urban citizens, guarantee their social welfare, and provide them with employment opportunities. This research aims to investigate the socioeconomic transformation and adaptation to urban life among resettled villagers who live in government-designated concentrated resettlement communities, designed specifically for displaced villagers in the state-sponsored urbanization, by articulating the interrelated roles played by individual households, resettlement communities, the local state and the market. Existing studies have extensively examined rural migrants without urban non-agricultural household registration (hukou) status in the

spontaneous urbanization process, leaving inadequate scholarly attention to those who achieve urban non-agricultural hukou status in the state-sponsored urbanization. In particular, there is a research lacuna on the special group of former villagers who live in concentrated resettlement communities. There is a strong case for focusing on this important group in critically assessing the government-led mainstream resettlement solution that has posed one of the greatest challenges in urbanizing resettled rural villagers. Driven by rapid industrialization and profound institutional changes, concentrated resettlement communities are an outcome of the ‘rural land in exchange for urban welfare’ model of the governmentengineered urbanization in China. After rural land acquisition for urban development and incorporation of rural villages into urban areas, affected villagers’ rural agricultural hukou status is collectively converted to urban non-agricultural hukou status by local administrative fiat and the villagers are subsequently relocated to urban resettlement communities, a special form of concentrated resettlement that is purposely built by local government. These resettlement communities are distinct in their housing types, property rights, resident composition and lifestyle. The physical concentration of resettled villagers, the long-lasting rural-urban divide, and the implementation of social security and welfare provision all challenge resettled villagers’ interaction with and adaptation to their host urban society. This paper probes three groups of questions: (1) How have the local

E-mail address: [email protected]. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.landusepol.2019.104097 Received 27 April 2019; Received in revised form 26 June 2019; Accepted 13 July 2019 0264-8377/ © 2019 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

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segregation and stratified citizenship is thus formed (Huang et al., 2017; Yang et al., 2010). For displaced villagers who have obtained urban hukou, market competition factors such as social networks, educational level, technical skills, and work experience may still marginalize their employment and daily life in urban society (Huang et al., 2010). The newly resettled typically have to negotiate the differences in all aspects between their origins and host societies in the adaptation process. Longer urban life experience and better economic conditions usually lead to a better social and economic adaptability (Xie et al., 2014). Existing studies on displaced villagers in China tend to overlook subtle spatiotemporal and sub-group differences and contradictions. Although newly urbanized villagers in government-designated resettlement communities share some common characteristics with other rural villagers in cities, the amount of rigorous research devoted to understanding the socioeconomic transformation and adaptation to urban life from the perspectives of resettled villagers in concentrated resettlement communities is extremely limited. Resettled villagers within government-designated resettlement communities often obtain their urban hukou status in a rather involuntary urbanization process, where local government has long seen rural property rights ambiguity as a means of generating profits (Qian, 2007). They are not necessarily granted with full entitlements to state-provided social and economic welfares enjoyed by original urban residents (Ong, 2014; Wang et al., 2017), and the illegitimacy of laws and regulations for social security system contributes to resettled villagers’ adaptation hardship and social exclusion (Guo, 2001; Wong and Zhao, 1999; Wu et al., 2018). The spatial and socioeconomic implications of government-designated concentrated resettlement communities warrant in-depth analysis.

institutional arrangements of concentrated resettlement communities evolved and incorporated resettled villagers into the redistribution of resources and opportunities in facilitating their adaptation to host urban society? (2) How have resettled villagers in concentrated resettlement communities transformed themselves in their adaptation to urban life from social, economic, cultural, and identity perspectives? How have resettled villagers negotiated socioeconomic differences and boundaries in the adaptation process? (3) What are the critical differences and structural changes among concentrated resettlement communities established in different time periods? How have these differences and their subsequent consequences influenced resettled villagers’ adaptation to urban life? The study analyzes the determinants in economic, social and environmental adaptations among resettled villagers. It points to the unique nexus between the urbanization of people and the urbanization of rural land by interpreting resettled villagers’ adaptation to urban life as a two-way interaction between resettled villagers in concentrated resettlement communities and their host urban society. The assistance to and reconstruction of displaced people’s livelihood are critical for equitable resettlement. But there has been inadequate recognition of mixed impacts from social, economic and environmental amenities on resettled villager households while they struggle with their transformation and adaptation to urban setting. In-depth assessments of resettled villagers’ transformation and expectations for resettlement environment and socioeconomic conditions help displaced villagers’ better adaptation. Grassroots opinions directly from resettled villagers would assist in reviewing current resettlement policies and planning resettlement communities. 2. Institutional and spatial-territorial conditions in resettlement and adaptation

3. Conceptual discourse on urban-rural divide, institutional constraints, and resource redistribution

In western literature, research has scrutinized immigrants’ adjustment to new settings (Kagan, 1981), the socialization of immigrants (Vergunst, 2008), the culturalisation of citizenship (Duyvendak et al., 2010), migration and political re-socialisation (Vargas-Ramos, 2011), mainly in industrialized countries. Due to discrimination and/or low transferability of pre-migration skills, the human capital that immigrants had acquired prior to immigration may be discounted in the labor market of their host society (Friedberg, 2000; Zeng and Xie, 2004). During immigrants’ transformation in new host society, from settlement, adaptation, to assimilation, their improved relationships with host society can gradually alleviate immigrants’ feelings of isolation and enhance their life satisfaction (Ullman and Tatar, 2001), and their original social networks may be partially reconstructed in host society (McMichael and Manderon, 2004). Host urban society’s institutions and policies help newcomers with financial assistance, employment opportunities, and collective life perceptions and behaviors, but can also be fragmented or maladaptive if they constrict and trap immigrants in marginal sectors of the urban economy and hinder immigrants’ efforts in destination communities (Aguilera, 2003; Li, 2004; Menjivar, 2000; Portes, 1998). The institutional and spatial-territorial barriers that confront displaced villagers in Chinese cities have placed them persistently in marginalized economic and social positions, making their resettlement and adaptation process to a certain extent resemble that experienced by international immigrants (Gu and Shen, 2003; Li, 2006; Nielsen et al., 2006; Shen et al., 2002; Solinger, 1999). Relocated villagers are likely to encounter institutional and market exclusion, cultural and identity discrimination, social exclusion, and residential segregation within the specific Chinese sociopolitical settings (Dong et al., 2011; Hui et al., 2013; Liu, 2010; Shen, 2013; Wang, 2010). China’s ongoing hukou reform has largely been reactive rather than proactive (Chen and Wang, 2015). The grant of an urban hukou may remove one’s socioeconomic ineligibility, but it is hard to change his/her ‘invisible’ rural origin that has been formed by China’s longstanding rural-urban divide. It takes much longer to eradicate deeply rooted social-psychological

This research is informed by three distinct strands of theoretical work – rural-urban societal differences, institutional boundaries, and resource redistribution, which are brought together in a conceptual framework designed to reflect social, environmental, and economic transformations after rural villagers’ resettlement. Scholars have extensively discussed the transformation of personal and neighbourhood social and economic ties, after people who have lived in stable and homogeneous rural communities with long-lasting spatial proximity and integration move into urban areas with frequent open and interactive contacts with the outside (Wellman and Leighton, 1979). Some argue that the urbanized social systems make resettled individuals depend more on formal organizational resources for sustenance, while others contend that their original communal contacts and neighbuorliness remain as important sources of socioeconomic supports (Sampson, 1999; Schiefloe, 1990; Wellman, 1979). Institutions consist of formal rules and informal constraints. Informal institutions, such as conventions, moral rules, and sociocultural norms, are often implicit but influential, and usually create uncertainty in socioeconomic transformation (Eggertsson, 1994; North, 1990). Institutions can deny a person accesses and resources to keep her/him in an inferior position in resource (re)distribution or not easily accepted as a bona fide member by their host society. Institutions help to establish two kinds of boundaries. The first kind of boundary maintains inequality by protecting privileged access to a resource and opportunities that stem from that resource. To achieve this objective, formal institutions are established and maintained by the privileged. The second kind of boundary is used for contesting inequality by resisting against the monopoly over a resource by the privileged (Tilly, 1998, 2002, 2005). Two major hindrances to institutional boundary changes are the cost of obtaining correct and sufficient information about institutional arrangement and the cost of persuading or forcing the privileged groups to acquiesce (Cheung, 1982; Mingione, 1996). A linear bipolar model maintains that adaptation is conceptualized 2

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4. Research methods

along a continuum from strong origin ties at one extreme to strong ties with the host society at the other, where the two extremes weaken each other. However, a two-dimensional model emphasizes that the relationship with the original society and the relationship with the new or dominant society should be considered separately and the two relationships may be independent. Being involved in both societies serves to promote better integration (Berry, 1980; Phinney, 1990; Van Oudenhoven et al., 2006). Unwritten and collectively honored social and cultural norms shape villagers’ identity, expectations, and behaviors in homogeneous and steady Chinese villages (Fei, 1992; Gao, 1999; Oi, 1999; Zhu and Guo, 2014). But informal institutions that prioritize strong kinship and paternalistic mindsets in village community governance are challenged in urban society. China’s rural-urban divide has penetrated into employment, welfare, education, and other resource redistribution systems (Huang et al., 2010; Wang, 2005). This is exacerbated by the fact that the urban labor market is less institutionalized and social discrimination against resettled villagers is often tolerated. Conventional systematic exclusion has recently given way to subtle forms of institutional segmentation that produces prejudice and reinforces boundaries (Lan, 2014). The stability of resettlement and adaptation process conducive to both resettled villagers and urban society has three layers of meaning: 1) it provides affected villagers with the stability of how they benefit from land expropriation as well as the stability of how to realize land values in their rural collective land and housing. Only well protected property rights can make land a stable source of wealth building and social security; 2) it provides other land-related interests with stability in an indirect way because these who may not own or use the land are still influenced by how expropriated lands are disposed and how benefits from such disposals are redistributed as resources; 3) it provides stable and sustainable social, economic, and environmental orders. Villagers' resettlement and adaptation has two phases. The first involves hukou status and physical form changes, and the second, which is more fundamental, entails changes in former villagers' values, ideology, culture, perception, behavior, employment, lifestyle, mindset, etc. Without the changes in the second phase, the adaptive transformation simply morphs into pseudo-urbanization. By examining the institutions, processes, and consequences of rural-urban converted citizens’ transformation in concentrated resettlement communities, this research offers a holistic understanding of this special government-designated housing community’s impact on resettled villagers’ daily life. The research assessed resettled villagers’ transformation and adaptation in urban setting in three interrelated aspects. Economic adaptation aspect included employment situations and opportunities, household income, nature of work, household expenditure and consumption, investment strategies, professional information support and skill training. Environmental adaptation aspect entailed natural environmental conditions, physical living environment, community amenities, built environment’s impacts on resettled villagers’ daily life, food safety, household vegetable planting, and traditional attachment to land. Social adaptation aspect referred to social relations between resettled villagers and native urban residents, resettled villagers’ attitudes to and perceptions of urban life, social activity participation, and social security system. Adaptation to urban economic conditions would decrease social program financial burden on local governments, ensure displaced villagers a long-term sustainable living standard, and contribute to urban economic development. Environmental adaptation concerns physical differences and transitions that displaced villagers face after resettlement into urban areas. The physical aspects have implications in rural villagers’ traditional life style and rural society values. Community design and neighbourhood planning may alleviate the differences and facilitate the transitions. Social adaptation plays an essential role in resettled villagers’ mental health and psychological wellbeing that are relevant to possible social maladjustment.

This empirical study was informed by the case of Nanjing. An ancient capital city for six dynasties in its 2,500- year history as a city, Nanjing is located in the east coast of China, about 300 km from Shanghai. As one of the anchor cities in the Yangtze River Delta Region, the city has a population of over 6.5 million in 2018. In recent decades, Nanjing’s development has taken advantage of its surrounding areas and directed its growth from the city core to suburbs. During its ambitious suburban expansion, Nanjing has had several major land acquisition compensation and resettlement policy reforms. In 2001, the then National Ministry of Land and Resources selected Nanjing as one of the nine pilot cities for the land acquisition reform that later involved two major land acquisition compensation and resettlement policy adjustments in 2004 and 2011. In 2004, Nanjing enacted Nanjing Land Acquisition Compensation and Resettlement Measures and Nanjing Landlost Villagers Basic Life Security Provisional Measures, which significantly increased land acquisition compensation and improved resettlement arrangement. About 70% of land acquisition compensation capital would be earmarked as affected villagers’ basic life security fund, and deposited into individual villager’s special account as their monthly allowance. In 2011, Nanjing further revised its Nanjing Land Acquisition Compensation and Resettlement Measures and announced Nanjing Landlost Villagers Social Security Measures, in which the local authority introduced the differentiated rural land compensations based on location and land market value. Nanjing is divided into three zones for this purpose. In addition, land-lost villagers have been included in Nanjing City and Town Enterprise Employee Basic Pension Plan, Nanjing City and Town Employment Insurance Plan, and other social security programs. Since 2011, the city has also followed the principle of ‘relative proximity’ in resettling displaced rural villagers within short distance from their original village sites. The intention is to create cultural and geographical proximity and reduce the difference between original and host communities, aiming for villagers’ better adaptation and life transformation. Villagers in concentrated resettlement communities in this study were originally from suburban peripheries of their host city and hence shared with the host urban society’s residents many common socioeconomic traits. Although recent welfare reforms have extended certain hukou- and employment- associated social insurance coverage to new urbanites, structural and institutional barriers have undermined the effectiveness of the programs and both employers and former villagers are less than enthusiastic to participate in these programs (Chan, 2009; Qian and Xue, 2017). Wufu Community in Qixia District (Fig. 1) was selected to represent the compensation and resettlement practice prior to 2011 when the old policy was in place, while Zhoudao Community in Jianye District (Fig. 2) was chosen to represent the compensation and resettlement practice after 2011. By focusing on residential communities in a city, the research provides more nuanced insights and experiences about resettled villagers from the basic urban societal cell. Situated in the east end of the city, Wufu Community has been part of the university town in Xianlin, Qixia District, rather distant from the core city. The community was developed in 2006, following the development of Xianlin University Town. Potential employment opportunities for resettled villagers in Wufu are mainly positions in manufacturing and chemical enterprises such as Kanghua Construction Company, Mingfeng Fertilizer Factory, and Nanjing Shiyue Printing Factory, etc. Wufu Community was developed when the compensation for land expropriation was not required to be based on market value and location. Located in an island in the Yangtze River, Zhoudao Community was developed in 2014, as part of an eco-park development initiated by the local government. Nanjing has encouraged the growth of educational institutions, hospitals, tourism industries, and ecological-scientific institutions in Jianye District. Zhoudao Community is near the city core and close to the city’s better developed areas. The land acquisition compensation there was evaluated based on both location and land market value and 3

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Fig. 1. Wufu Community in Qixia District (Source: Nanjing Municipal Bureau of Planning and Nature Resources).

displaced villagers are typically passive participants with limited choices other than obeying the institutional arrangements made by local authorities. It is thus important to assess the resettlement process and displaced villagers’ transformation and adaptation in urban setting from a grassroots experience perspective. In this study, resettled villager’s perspectives of their economic, environmental, and social adaptations were examined. A survey was conducted in December 2017 to collect data for this research, after a pilot survey completed a few months earlier in September. Survey questions were answered in person privately, and survey information was completely anonymous and confidential. Data were collected in a simple random sampling method. If a survey is conducted during daytime on weekdays, elder residents, less educated, and socially isolated individuals can take up a larger proportion of the sample (Menold, 2014). Therefore, the survey for this research was carried out during daytime on Fridays and Saturdays. Potential survey participants were approached in public spaces such as community parks, parking lots, and apartment building entrances, and their answers were assessed on site to determine if the data were valid. The survey started from the core of each community and then moved along multiple directions to the fringe to ensure randomness. A valid return sample size of 150 resettled villagers over 18 years old who lived in the selected communities was registered for each community. The valid returned questionnaires were about 5% of the total sample of approximately 3,000 apartment units in each community. The survey consisted of 27 variables in economic, social, and environmental aspects. Five-point Likert scale was used to assess resettled villagers’ perceived adaptation levels from ‘strongly disagree’, ‘somewhat disagree’, ‘neutral’, ‘somewhat agree’, to ‘strongly agree’. A three-stage data processing model was established for analysis. The study applied a principal component analysis to remove low and double loadings to simplify the data (Du and Pan, 2014; Fu and Lehto, 2018). Principal component analysis helps to find relationships between variables and patterns in n-dimensional data (Everitt and Hothorn, 2011). The factor values were scores for each question in economic, social, and environmental adaptions obtained from the

Fig. 2. Zhoudao Community in Jianye District (Source: Nanjing Municipal Bureau of Planning and Nature Resources).

therefore the compensation and social security arrangements were much better than what villagers in Wufu obtained many years ago. This study evaluated resettled villager’s transformation to new urban life and their social, economic, and environmental adaptations by gauging affected villagers’ own perceptions and opinions on the process. Rural villager resettlement, as a critical part of the state-sponsored urbanization, has been a process driven by several forces in which 4

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The questionnaires were coded as variables from V01 to V27. After the rotation (Varimax with Kaiser Normalization), the variables were categorized into economic adaptation (Table 1), environmental adaptation (Table 2), and social adaptation (Table 3), based on their loadings. The correlations between the total adaptation level and three subscales were analyzed to investigate the relevance of each subscale to the total adaptation condition in the two communities. In both communities, the total adaptation level was strongly correlated with the economic adaptation, with the respective coefficients of 0.867 for Wufu and 0.927 for Zhoudao. The environmental adaptation in Zhoudao Community had a correlation coefficient of 0.678 with a p-value less than 0.01, suggesting the rejection of the null hypothesis. The correlation analysis for Wufu Community did not support a strong case because the value for Pearson correlation was 0.373. The difference probably stems from the fact that Wufu is located far from the city core and near the Qixia Mountainous Area where its physical environment resembles that of rural areas. Wufu (0.616) and Zhaodao (0.685) Communities demonstrated a moderate or strong correlation in social adaptation. All subscales had a p-value less than 0.01, meaning they were statistically significant and correlated with the total adaptation level with moderate to strong relations accepted with high significance.

Likert scale answers. The components generated from the principal component analysis were combinations of original variables. Variables, with different loadings, were categorized into a new set of components based on their individual statistical significance. A scree plot test was then utilized to test the feasibility of categorizing the data into three subscales and to justify the derived adaptation subscales, followed by a correlation analysis of each item in the subscales and the adaptation score total. The eigenvalues of the components and the difference between them tested whether it was reasonable to categorize them into three subscales of economic, social, and environmental adaptations. After the three-stage quantitative analysis, descriptive comparisons between the two resettlement communities added more insights onto the resettlement community analysis. The survey included 18 potential resettlement policy recommendations drawn from the existing literature (e.g. Hui et al., 2013; Li et al., 2016; Liang and Cao, 2015; Zhao and Zou, 2017). Survey participants were invited to prioritize these policy recommendations or offer their own opinions on possible policy reforms. 5. Research findings and discussions 5.1. Three-stage quantitative analysis findings

5.2. Economic adaptation

The principal component analysis and the scree plot sorted survey questions into three subscales with reasonable loadings. The total adaptation score was highly correlated to all three subscales, and economic adaptation had the highest correlation coefficient in both Wufu and Zhoudao Communities. The Kaiser-Meyer-Okin measure of sampling adequacy is a value between 0 and 1, and the closer to 1 the value is, the better the result is. This analysis generated a value of 0.907, meaning that the analysis went well with a statistical significance of Bartlett’s test of sphericity being less than 0.05. The initial eigenvalues were the variances of each principal component with standardized variables. The total contained the eigenvalues, with the first component taking the highest value of 9.402, and the variance decreased for the second component valued 2.520, and the third component valued 1.398. The first three principal components explained nearly 50% of the total variances. The principal component analysis rotated the data and generated a set of new components to explain the pattern. Each of the 27 components in the scree plot represented a combination of the original variables. The scree plot test indicated that the first three principal components had the highest values with a steep decline pattern. The rather flat line starting from the fourth component suggested that each component after that component accounted for a very small share of the total variance (Fig. 3).

The age profile of resettled villagers in Zhoudao indicated that the population age groups of 46–55 (24.7%) and 56–65 (20.0%) were two largest cohorts. The age group of 18–25 was the least pronounced one with a mere share of 6.7%. In Wufu, the age profile showed a similar pattern. In Zhoudao, only about 10.0% of resettled villagers held a bachelor’s degree or higher. And about 28.7% of survey participants held a middle school diploma. Only 4.0% of survey participants held a bachelor’s degree or higher in Wufu, where those with a middle school diploma accounted for about 30.0%. In both communities, there were slightly more than 10.0% of surveyed villagers were illiterate. Before resettlement, about 43.3% of resettled villagers in Zhoudao were in agriculture, forestry, and/or animal husbandry, making the largest employment cluster. Second to it was those employed in nearby factories (18.0%), followed by migrant worker (9.3%). The unemployment rate in Zhoudao was 14.0% before land expropriation. After resettlement, only about 3.3% of survey participants remained in agriculture, forestry, and/or animal husbandry. The share of those who worked in nearby factories dropped to 8.7% and that of migrant worker slightly increased to 10.7%. The resettlement increased the unemployment rate pronouncedly to 62.0%. A similar pattern can be observed in Wufu. There were 39.3% of resettled villagers in Wufu worked in agriculture, forestry, and/or animal husbandry, and the percentage dropped significantly to almost zero percent after land expropriation. 43 out of 59 villagers who used to work in agriculture became unemployed after resettlement. 13 out of 33 villagers who used to work in nearby factories also failed to find any job. In Wufu, the unemployment rate more than doubled from the pre-resettlement 21.3% to 53.3% after land expropriation. High unemployment rate in both communities imposed tremendous challenge on economic adaptation. Both the lack of essential professional skills and traditional commitment to family duties such as taking care of grandchildren contributed to the unemployment rate increase. In Zhoudao, about 19.9% of surveyed participants earned an annual income of less than 20,000 RMB and 17.8% of the participants reported an annual income of more than 90,000 RMB, making income segregation and economic polarization evident prior to land expropriation. After resettlement, the proportion of those who earned less than 20,000 RMB increased substantially to 36.3% and the percentage of those who earned more than 90,000 RMB slightly increased to 19.2%. The resettlement in Zhoudao did not alleviate but exacerbated income segregation and economic polarization in the community. The income profile

Fig. 3. Scree Plot Test. 5

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Table 1 Economic Adaptation Variable Loadings. Variable

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V09 There has been very limited assistance and/or education available for investment and entrepreneurship V01 It is difficult to find a job in the city due to education and professional skill requirements V08 Information about employment opportunities and job seeking is inadequately available V03 Employment positions that I can secure are low-paid, dirty, and physically demanding V07 Home-work place distance is longer in the city than in rural villages V02 I feel depressed in urban working environment V04 Urban jobs are fast-pacing and stressful compared with agricultural work in rural villages V06 Daily expenditure in urban life is high given our current household income Eigenvalues % of Variance

0.758 0.735 0.709 0.705 0.632 0.625 0.611 0.416 2.52 9.33%

influenced their economic situation after resettlement. For those whose income had been mainly from non-agricultural economic activities prior to resettlement, such as rural intellectuals, private enterprise owners, and town and village cadres, they were more open to land conversion and resettlement and less concerned about their adaptation to urban life than those whose income had been more dependent on agriculture-related economic activities. The lack of information on investment, entrepreneurship, and social capital resources was another adaptation barrier because resettled villagers in recent years received a considerable amount of monetary compensation but did not know how to use the compensation fund to generate long-term benefits for themselves.

Table 2 Environmental Adaptation Variable Loadings. Variable

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V11 Growing own vegetables and fruits is preferred over shopping in grocery stores V18 High-rise apartment living makes me feel I lose attachment to land V12 I am not used to urban public transit system V10 Micro-climate condition in the city is unsatisfactory especially during the summer V17 Gate community creates the feeling of isolation and inconvenience V13 I have had limited interactions with new neighbours Eigenvalues % of Variance

0.578 0.543 0.522 0.520 0.455 0.396 1.398 5.18%

5.3. Social adaptation

of Wufu demonstrated a different paradigm. Prior to land expropriation, about 60.3% of survey participants lived with an annual income of less than 20,000 RMB and few survey participants had an annual income of more than 80,000 RMB. After resettlement, the number of resettled villagers who lived with an annual income of less than 20,000 RMB decreased by half. Only 24.7% of survey participants claimed that they had an annual income at that low level. About 14.3% of the participants reaped an annual income of more than 90,000 RMB, a giant leap from a tiny 0.7% share prior to land expropriation. The different income change patterns in the two communities can be explained by the fact that Zhoudao was developed after 2014 and many resettled villagers were still yet to find a job. Moreover, high-technology companies, ecological innovative firms, and educational institutions typically have high expectation in their employees’ education attainment. In Wufu, land expropriation and resettlement occurred more than a decade ago which gave resettled villagers much longer time to secure incomes in various ways. In the formation and consolidation of resettled villager economic stratification, their socioeconomic status before land expropriation

Social adaptation is critical in resettled villagers’ negotiation with their host community and agents of the market and the state. Yet, resettled villagers often find themselves unable to blend in new urban society and thus feel socially awkward and alienated. For displaced villagers, the resettlement and adaptation process is a transition from a land-based villager rights system to a urban-based citizen rights one, which involves changes in social activities, social security, social networks, and ideology. The new urban setting would cause the destruction of rural social ties, and discourage interconnections among residents, leading to community segmentation (White and Guest, 2003). In both Zhoudao Community and Wufu Community, more than 43.0% of survey participants admitted that they made very limited visits to or interaction with their neighbours. Gate community has become a standard form of new residential community development as the high-density, self-regulated, and self-sustaining residential system is deemed suitable for urban life. But the cellular form of community life challenges traditional rural lifestyle and, to a certain extent, dismantles traditional social networks among resettled villagers. Indeed, many

Table 3 Social Adaptation Variable Loadings. Variable

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V26 It is not easy to build new connections with people outside our resettlement community V27 I am not interested in participating in activities outside our community V22 I am not used to urban ways of thinking and viewpoints V19 I cannot get along very well with native urban residents V24 I disagree with many urban viewpoints about financial sources and consumptions V25 I feel excluded by native urban residents in many occasions V20 I am not interested in urban festivals and cultural events V23 Our rural social and cultural traditions sometimes upset urban residents V16 I am unsatisfied with current infrastructure and public facilities in our community V15 I prefer to live in rural house instead of high-rise resettlement apartment V14 I prefer to live with neighbours from the same village rather than live with neighbours from different villages V21 I am not interested in urban recreational activities organized by community organizations V05 Social security and land expropriation compensation are insufficient for long-term urban life Eigenvalues % of Variance

0.776 0.768 0.755 0.722 0.671 0.653 0.644 0.596 0.536 0.429 0.422 0.348 0.318 9.402 34.82%

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expenditure. The prevalent preference of planting own vegetables, if space was available, was for lower expenditure on food, but also for food safety as villagers had little confidence in purchasing vegetables in the market that, in their opinion, were nurtured with overdosed pesticides and hormones. The survey suggested that in addition to policy reforms for resettlement and compensation approaches, attention should be drawn to resettlement community planning and design. In planning and designing resettlement communities, planners need to give more consideration to physical conditions and social features of resettlement communities to address the legacy of rural habits and traditional village culture, and to facilitate former villagers’ transformation to urban life.

resettled villagers expressed that they felt isolated by physical barriers such as walls, gates, and fences. After being a urban citizen for several years, about 52.7% of survey participants in Zhoudao found that it was eventually not difficult to get along with native urban residents. Wufu’s survey registered a lower percentage of 42.0%, even though the resettlement there occurred several years before Zhoudao’s land expropriation. This shows that geographical location and proximity to the city core influenced the intensity of resettled villager’s interaction with native urban residents. Gate community reinforced the separation of resettled villagers from native urban residents. About half of resettled villagers found no major issues in their interactions with native urban residents, probably because there were not many instances in which they could have meaningful interactions with native urban residents on a regular basis, especially for the unemployed. Meanwhile, kinship and friendship remained strong among resettled villagers and mutual assistance among them still mattered after resettlement. Therefore, resettled villagers did not have to approach native urban residents for assistance. But the same rural social fabric might also be the source of predicament in resettled villager’s social adaptation to urban setting. Outside gate communities, one of the options to mingle with native urban residents is to participate in urban festivals or cultural events. Resettled villagers in Zhoudao, the community much closer to the city core, had an open mind about urban festivals and cultural events. There, about 46.7% of resettled villagers had participated in these activities and 27.4% of resettled villagers showed little interest. In Wufu, only 31.3% of resettled villagers had participated in urban festivals and cultural events and more resettled villagers (38.6%) showed little interest in these activities. Better living condition and relatively less financial burden in Zhoudao encouraged resettled villagers’ open mind and active participation in urban festivals and cultural events. The feeling of isolation and exclusion among some resettled villagers failed to encourage them to actively build social connections with the urban society outside their resettlement communities. High density resettlement communities typically accommodate resettled villagers from different villages in the same region whose land was expropriated. The survey showed that among resettled villagers, there was a preference of living with neighbours from same villages. In Zhoudao, about 32.0% of resettled villagers preferred to live with their former village acquaintances and about 43.3% of resettled villagers felt comfortable to live with people from other villages. The preference for former village neighbours seemed stronger in Wufu, where 46.7% of resettled villagers stated that they preferred to live with their former village community members. Wufu’s remote location, proximity to the rural mountainous area, and fewer employment opportunities seemed to strengthen the traditional rural social life mindset and slow the social adaptation process.

5.5. Interrelations between economic, environmental, and social adaptations The empirical findings about economic, environmental, and social adaptations have been discussed separately in preceding sections. However, these three aspects are deeply connected to each other and their close interrelations mean that resettled villagers’ adaptation processes and experiences are the consequence of their combined effects. Transitions of surroundings induced by land acquisition request environmental adaptation which is the beginning of displaced villagers’ life transformation. It is then followed by transitions of individual and household economic roles, social security, interpersonal relations, and social activities in new urban society. Each of these three aspects has indispensable consequences to others. Such interconnections work together to reflect the overall adaptation experience of displaced villagers. The notion can be further supported by the policy recommendation preferences among displaced villagers. When asked for policy recommendations to facilitate their economic, social, and environmental adaptations, resettled villagers in Zhoudao prioritized the following five areas: 1) to build more public area and green space for residents to interact with each other; 2) to promote community activities for more interactions among resettled villagers; 3) to offer better compensation package; 4) to increase publicity of social resources and entertainment activities; and 5) to improve social insurance system. Resettled villagers in Wufu listed their prioritized areas as: 1) to build more commercial streets rather than large shopping malls; 2) to promote community activities for more interactions among resettled villagers; 3) to offer better compensation package; 4) to increase publicity of social resources and entertainment activities; and 5) to offer employment opportunities or job relocation assistance programs. The prioritizations were well responsive to resettled villagers’ expectations in relation to their current specific geospatial and socioeconomic conditions. For instance, resettled villagers in Wufu wanted policy makers to build more commercial streets to meet their daily life demands because Wufu is located in a place with manufacturing enterprises and extensive suburban infrastructure but only small markets within gate communities to serve resettled villagers. Resettled villagers in Zhoudao had to live in high-rise resettlement apartments which were much denser than the typical seven-story resettlement apartments in Wufu. So Zhoudao resettled villagers expressed more concerns about high building density, which was not just a cause of physical inconvenience but also an unwelcomed contrast to their traditional attachment to land. In both communities, resettled villagers felt that current social security programs offered by the city authority lacked sufficient flexibility and could not meet the demands from land-lost villagers’ diversified livelihood. The study introduced a few research limitations. The survey asked the same questions to all participants, without differentiating individual characteristics. Survey time could be extended to every day in a week and include nighttime to make a more inclusive sample. This would minimize sample bias as the current survey sample tended to include more female and elderly. Survey research relies on the accuracy of responses from its participants. Low education attainment could create

5.4. Environmental adaptation When asked for their opinions about working environment in the city, about 75.3% of surveyed participants in Zhoudao perceived themselves well adapted or held a neutral attitude toward working environment. However, in Wufu, about 44.6% of survey participants felt that current working environment was depressing and caused them a great deal of stress. The difference between the two communities could be explained by Zhoudao’s advantageous location that features a newly developed eco-park with educational institutions and high technology companies, in contrast to the cluster of manufacturing and chemical enterprises in Wufu. Living costs in urban environment such as heating, public transportation, property management fees, and extra curriculum programs for children imposed financial stress on resettled villagers. In Zhoudao, about 54.7% of surveyed participants reported that high urban living expenditure stressed them out. Similarly, about 48.7% of Wufu’s surveyed participants felt difficult to live with high urban living 7

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when land was a tremendous contributor to economic growth; and 2) the trend of one-way rural to urban population movement will be replaced by a two-way population movement in which a growing number of urban dwellers choose to live in rural areas. These changing patterns call for timely resettlement institutional revisions and offer opportunities for better adaptation experience. The study begins by referring to the existing international literature on immigrants’ transformation and adaptation to their receiving societies and by presenting several observations shared by inter-country immigrants in industrialized countries and government-designated resettlement community villagers in Chinese cities. While institutional factors are country-specific, there are common grounds regarding resettlement and adaptation in new society that can offer mutual learning. This study opens up such an opportunity from the perspectives of urban-rural divide, institutional constraints, and resource redistribution, especially for government-arranged and involuntary resettlements that can fundamentally change the affected population’s life. It sheds light on the quest for equitable and sustainable resettlement in different property rights regimes and institutional settings.

difficulties in understanding some survey questions and policy initiatives even after they were briefly explained. Survey participants’ openness to a few questions regarding their privacy such as annual income varied, which could challenge survey validity. Moreover, adaptation is a rather subjective concept and people interpret it in different ways, which influences the consistency in evaluating individual’s adaptation experience. Future research can conduct a longitudinal survey that includes more representative communities. Crossregional comparative studies including inland and western China would add insights to the understanding of resettlement and adaptation in different contexts. 6. Conclusions China’s land property ownership transfers and institutional rearrangements in urbanization have fundamental influence on government-led resettlement approach. Legacy from the past rural collective institution, intentional rural land property rights ambiguity, and complicated interests in rural to urban land conversion all condition the villager resettlement institution that contextualizes this study. The state’s unwillingness in articulating rural collective land ownership practical details in legal documentation creates institutional predicament in compensation and resettlement policy reforms. Rural villagers have limited real recourse in the face of local governments’ power over land rights in resettlement. The top-down administrative intervention in compensation and resettlement deprives rural land use rights and jeopardizes villagers’ rights over their land, which engenders many difficulties in resettled villager’s adaptation to urban life. This study demonstrates that post-resettlement adaptation depends on specific geographical, environmental, and economic conditions. The differences in resettlement and adaptation experiences are the consequence of conflicts and compromises among different interests and various social, economic, and environmental factors in the receiving urban society. Current resettlement institution’s protection of rural individuals’ rights over land and interests in resettlement and adaptation derived from these rights is not sufficient and these individuals’ rights in resettlement and adaptation are sometimes overlooked. A bottom-up approach that is open to resettled villagers’ opinions and concerns would help to achieve an equitable and successful realization of resettled villagers’ transformation and adaptation to urban life. Resettlement not only redefines the relationship between human and land but also reconstructs the relationship among people through their activities in urban society – between resettled villagers and native urban residents as well as among resettled residents from different villages. The intentional institutional ambiguity that used to act like lubricant for an urban growth machine may not work for the future because the socioeconomic circumstance in China differs significantly from its past’s (Ho, 2014). China’s most recent reforms in rural construction and homestead lands seem to admit the changes and start to recognize rural land’s market value. For instance, the 3rd Plenary Session of the 18th CCP Central Committee held in 2012 announced that the central state would grant peasants more property rights and help to protect such rights. In 2015, the central government officially started to allow rural collective business construction land to enter the market for transfer, lease, stock, and to enjoy the same market status as that of urban construction land. The reform calls for the institutional development of rural business construction land transfer and added value distribution system. Future resettlement institutional reform will be an integral part of China’s ongoing rural land reform that acknowledges more added values in rural land, which would then overcome many barriers and alleviate challenges in resettled villager’s transformation and adaptation in urban society. China’s resettlement policy environment faces at least two paradigm changes: 1) the dependence on land in the country’s economic growth will decline, which is different from what happened in the past 30 years

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