Changing Land Policy and its Impact on Local Growth: The Experience of the Shenzhen Special Economic Zone, China, in the 1980s

Having elaborated the transformation of land policy in the wake of Chinese economic reform and the background to the formation of a new land policy in the Shenzhen Special Economic Zone, China, this paper examines whether the new land policy, which is intended to assist inward and indigenous industries, has achieved positive effects on local growth in Shenzhen. In the course of implementation of the new policy, a dual land market has been created, which contracts commercial land supply on the one hand and encourages subsidized land hoarding on the other. Through the process of revived market-oriented property development, the survey has found that the main beneficiaries of the land subsidy are developers and property investors, while real tenants and the local government have not benefited as much as the land policy intended.