Planning and Bureaucratic Control
Rural urbanization policy authorizes county governments to compose development plans for all county-towns, thereby increasing the county's control. In the case of the county seat, county governmental control is very tight. The plan for Zhujiang town, the seat of Jiangpu county, was composed by the county's Urban Planning Office, which reported that the town cannot evade the plan.[19] While officials from the county seat had to approve certain aspects of town construction, they had no decision-making authority: "We want total control of the town, but the county does not want to give it to us, so there is a conflict" (Jiangpu 1986). Mistrust of town planners and the large number of county governmental units in the county seat means that the county must ensure good conditions for its employees. Therefore town development is orchestrated to benefit the county, not the town, even though the county seat may benefit from better funding and urban planning.
Planning for the county seat of Wujiang county is "directly" under control of a fifteen-person County Urban Construction Leadership Small Group (Xian cheng jianshe lingdao xiaozu ), whose sole task is to develop the county seat.[20] With fourteen members drawn from leaders of various county bureaus,[21] only one person represents the county-seat government.
A critical planning question concerns land use. Under China's Land Law of April 1987 the amount of land that can shift out of agriculture is fixed at the provincial level, with quotas passed down to counties and towns. Wujiang county can appropriate 144 mou each year,[22] whose distri-
[19] Interview with officials from the Planning and Management Office, Department of Urban Development and Environmental Protection, Jiangpu county, Jiangsu province, 13 May 1986.
[20] The following comments are based on an interview with the deputy mayor of Songling town and the deputy director of the county's Urban Construction Office (Xiaocheng jianshi bangongwei ), 14 July 1988.
[21] The units included the Materials Bureau, Public Security Bureau, Communications Bureau, Land Management Bureau, Environmental Protection Bureau, Industrial Electricity Bureau, Post Office, Labor Bureau, et cetera.
[22] One mou is one-fifteenth of a hectare.
bution is determined by the county Land Management Bureau. Thus large projects using more than 3 mou of land need county authorization, further limiting county-town autonomy. County-towns have officials responsible to the county Urban Development Bureau who monitor land use and housing construction in the town and in the surrounding countryside as well. All peasants must now get permits from the town government before building new homes, even in distant villages.
But the extent of county control is unclear. If representatives of the Urban Development Bureau are indigenous to the locality, they will be enmeshed in local politics and will have difficulty denying their colleagues a chance to move onto land near the town.[23] Since towns can expropriate three mou of land without county approval, cadres can take land piece by piece for their homes, so long as the local official responsible for monitoring land usage is party to the scheme. In Tangquan town, between 1985 and 1987, all high-ranking township government officials, and many of their relatives and friends, moved into villages surrounding the town under the pretext of "town development." Inhabitants in these villages were furious, since each new home shrunk the allotment of land from which peasants made their living, but they could only send letters and photos to the provincial, city, and county governments. In response, county officials asked town officials to investigate. Thus, although the county may control large projects, town officials can ignore some county directives and expropriate land on the basis of small-town development.