Resolving Land Disputes in East Asia: Exploring the Limits of Law

Economic development and mass urbanization have unleashed unprecedented levels of land disputes in East Asia. In China and Vietnam especially, courts and other legal institutions struggle to find lasting solutions. It is against this background of legal failure that this book brings together leading scholars to understand how state agencies, land users and land developers imaginatively engage with each other to resolve disputes. Drawing on empirically rich case studies, contributors explore the limits of law and legal institutions in resolving land disputes and reveal insights into how key actors in East Asia understand land disputes. Their studies reveal promising dispute resolution practices and point to the likely ways that states will deal with land disputes in the future.

Hualing Fu is a Professor of Law in the Faculty of Law of the University of Hong Kong, where his research interests include public law, human rights and legal institutions in China.

John Gillespie is a Professor of Law and Director of the Asia Pacific Business Regulation Group at Monash University, Melbourne, Australia. He specialises in law and development, regulatory theory and socialist-transforming Asia.