This paper takes a fresh look at the land dispossession that is central to Chinese urbanisation. It documents in detail the property rights changes that occur when village land is taken by a municipal government and analyses the value of those rights by looking at compensation accounts for a case study village in the city of Xiamen in Fujian Province. The purpose of the paper is to show the complexity of the property rights dynamics during land expropriation and the results in terms of villager income. The paper also shows that, in Xiamen, the local state has made a series of concessions such that displaced villagers now receive a compensation package that not only includes compensation for lost agricultural land, production and homes but also a share of the urban land value uplift created by the infrastructure investments of the municipal state.
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