Collective property legal regimes and the evolution of Chinese enterprise reforms: a historical appraisal

In the experience of Chinese economic reforms a capital role has been played by those collective institutions derived from the dismantlement of the communes established during the Maoist era. Legal regimes governing collective rights over both land and enterprises, starting from the early 1980s, empowered local communities to foster private-led economic initiatives. The Township and Village Enterprise became, in those years, the leading force of Chinese economic development. Collective enterprises constantly sought a balance between theoretical frameworks of property rights, rooted in socialist legal theory, and the increasing necessity for a diversification of instruments able to grant families and private individuals the powers to undertake economic endeavours. A historical appraisal of the role played by collective enterprises in the transformation of Chinese economic law is essential to understand how the current, highly diversified, regime of property rights in China came to be.