Fluidity and Integration of Property Rights in State Building: Resource Distribution, Personal Naming, and Privilege Economy in 20th-Century China

Private property and the idea of “right” are intricately interwoven with the process of state building in the history of 20th-Century China and had led to constant and heated debates between “public good” and “private interest”. By exploring four case studies across temporalities from 1910s to 1970s around the birth and development of property rights in land and livestock registration, name regulation, and imported goods distribution of modern Chinese society, this panel proposes that civil rights and state building are mutually constitutive and irreducible from each other in history. For further information, please visit: https://www.chinesehistorians.org/fluidity-and-integration/