Land Rent, House Rent and Distribution of Wealth: The Logic of Capital in the Urbanization of the Guangdong Rural Since 1979

Siu Yu-Kwan discusses Marx's rent theory.  There are three different concepts of rent: monopoly rent, differential rent (Type I and Type II), and absolute ground rent. Due to the monopoly of land ownership, the formerly self-sufficient farmers were forced to leave their lands and moved to the city to become workers. That had set the preconditions for further production of surplus value and accumulation of capital. After three decades of economic reform, the mode of production in rural China has gradually been shifted from rural cooperation to township enterprise management. In this sense, the ownership of land is converted from public to private.  The author takes Guangdong as an example and points out that 3 new classes are formed in the rural areas: 1) the capitalist by the foreign investors; 2) the landlord by the villagers; 3) the working class by the migrant workers.