The study is set against the backdrop of the urbanization trend in present-day China, and focuses on the relationship between farmers who have lost their land (“land-lost farmers”) and local government. Particularly, it applies the extended case method to answer the following two questions: first, in what ways do the forces of integration and conflict manifest themselves in the relationship between land-lost farmers and local government? Second, how do land-lost farmers and local government apply respective modalities in the context of their interplay? The main finding is that the two groups, land-lost farmers and officials, are engaged in a complex and dynamic relationship. That relationship is played out locally within a network of power-interest structures, which not only manifests itself as forces of integration and conflict, but also as an ongoing process, a game played by knowledgeable agents, whose strategies are enacted, and in so doing, both reproduce that game and alter it. Readers will gain an ethnographic understanding of the relationship based on an in-depth examination of perspectives on both sides of the equation.

The site of Recife's Brasília Teimosa favela emerged as a flash point of economic and political interests in the 1930s and the scene of subsequent strife into the 1980s. The name of this district is a contemptuous allusion to the new capital of Brazil, with its forward-thinking planning policies and urban design, in stark contrast to the favela. This concise account unearths events surfacing through periods of revolution, dictatorship, populism, Cuban Communism, the 1964 military coup d'etat and crackdown to the amplified reverberation of civil society voices and engagement decades later. Shifting ideologies and jolting transitions between regimes directly affected what occurred on this 110-acre parcel of urban land. Between 1934 and 1984 competing groups and individuals came to covet this space because of its strategic location and political consequence. Brasília Teimosa is about the politics of ouster and the power of resistance. What took place there still resonates in squatter settlements throughout Brazil; deplorable living conditions prevalent in favelas are the result of deprivation of access to market resources. This work examines the interactions between the state and neighbourhood associations regarding the allocation of public goods and services in the context of urban resources and their system of supply. In particular it focuses on the political struggles of shanty residents of Brasília Teimosa that are pertinent to the provision of and access to urban land tenure. Control and use of public lands have functioned as instruments of the state to pursue political projects in coalition with private real estate partners, to undermine the strength of opposing factions, or to seal populist pacts with the urban poor who, as illegal occupants of public land, are locked into a dependency relationship with the state. As will be shown, the residents of Brasília Teimosa discovered and exploited "space" for political manoeuvres in order to secure permanence on a centrally located, publicly-owned site.

This book is selection of author’s articles about China’s reform and development. The earliest article of the anthology was written in 1986 and the latest in 2017. The author studies the changes in property rights and system based on the practical experience of China’s reform. In the first article “Economics in the Real World”, the author expounds on Coasean Economics’ Research Method which is “neither fashionable nor popular” and finds out problems from the fascinating real world. It focuses on researching the constraint conditions and strives to have cognition generalized. Guided by this methodology, all the following articles are about empirical research on China’s reform, involving such fields as farmland reform, reform of state-owned enterprises, medical reform, urban-rural relationship, monetary system and regulatory reform. In the concluding article “Institutional Cost and China’s Economy”, the author, gives a new interpretation for the economic logic of the high-speed growth and transformation of China’s economy by redefining concepts. Reading the anthology, readers may not only follow the author’s train of thought to have an overview of the surging and magnificent reform course from small clues to the evident, but also have a broader train of thought on studying and comprehending the practical problems of China.