This paper analyses how rural property rights reforms have reshaped grassroots governance in the rapid urbanisation process in China. The management and distribution of the villages’ collective property has become a flashpoint for local conflict when collective farmland is taken for urban uses. Changping, a rural district located on the northern periphery of Beijing, pioneered a property rights reform to convert villages’ collective assets into a new form of shareholding co-operative. Along with the election of a new board of directors that is now in charge of collective property, the reforms are redefining the jurisdiction of the party, the village government and the shareholding co-operative organisation, thus reconfiguring the political and economic power structure at the village level.
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