Assessing performance and disparities in China’s land finance transition: Insights from neo-liberalism and neo-Marxism

Abstract

The overreliance of local governments on land finance has resulted in a series of problems in China, which call for the transition of land finance. While existing research focused on the risk and sustainability arising from land finance overreliance, an assessment of land finance transition performance is still lacking. Based on neo-liberalism and neo-Marxism theories, we proposed an analytical framework for assessing land finance transition considering market-government interplay. Based on this framework, we evaluated the performance of the market, government, and overall transition among 105 prefecture-level cities using land market data and governmental policy data. The results indicated that market-oriented transition performance declined gradually from the eastern cities to the western and northeastern cities. Government-led transition performance was still low in the central and northeastern cities. Overall, the land finance transition in eastern cities achieved positive progress, contrasting with the lagged progress in northeastern cities because of urban shrinkages and revenue shortages. We further reflected our analytical framework and empirical findings on land finance transition by integrating neoliberal and neo-Marxism approaches and market-state interplay, which can provide insights for the continual transition in the future.