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Social Hierarchies And The Formation Of Customary Property Law In Pre-Industrial China And England, Taisu Zhang
Social Hierarchies And The Formation Of Customary Property Law In Pre-Industrial China And England, Taisu Zhang
Faculty Scholarship
Comparative lawyers and economists have often assumed that traditional Chinese laws and customs reinforced the economic and political dominance of elites and, therefore, were unusually “despotic” towards the poor. Such assumptions are highly questionable: Quite the opposite, one of the most striking characteristics of Qing and Republican property institutions is that they often gave significantly greater economic protection to the poorer segments of society than comparable institutions in early modern England. In particular, Chinese property customs afforded much stronger powers of redemption to landowners who had pawned their land. In both societies, land-pawning occurred far more frequently among poorer households …
Do Kinship Networks Strengthen Private Property? Evidence From Rural China, Taisu Zhang, Xiaoxue Zhao
Do Kinship Networks Strengthen Private Property? Evidence From Rural China, Taisu Zhang, Xiaoxue Zhao
Faculty Scholarship
This paper finds that the existence of strong kinship networks tends to limit state interference with private property use in rural China by protecting villagers against unwanted government land takings. It then distinguishes kinship networks from other kinds of social networks by showing that their deterrence effect against coercive takings is far more significant and resilient under conditions of prevalent rural-urban migration than deterrence by neighborhood cooperatives and religious groups. Finally, the paper attempts to identify and differentiate between various possible mechanisms behind these effects: It argues that kinship networks protect private property usage mainly through encouraging social reciprocity between …