Land Mass Incidents Triggered And Its Governance

Today, China is undergoing a holistic social transformation, together with the march forward in its economic development and in the reform of its political regime. The increasing social stratification intensifies greatly various social problems and conflicts, yet the ever-growing urbanization deprives more and more the legit cultivation land of the rural people, and thus their legitimate rights and benefits after all-the loss of safeguard measures for the livelihood of these people. Recently, there were quite a number of outbreaks of group protests happened in the rural areas due to the coerced land acquisition of the local government and the social impact was substantially malignant. Therefore, it has become a crucial topic for the party and government to better cope with the incoming problems in the continual land acquisition and to prevent further outbreaks of such.This paper selectively studied four typical group incidents happened in the rural areas within the Huang-Huai-Hai Zone of China with a combination of scientific methodologies. The author travelled into the loci of those incidents to collect first-hand information and relevant materials from the local people in order to reproduce the reality of the incidents and to understand the core of such incidents from different point of views. With the strong evidences and material foundation, the paper utilized theories of social crisis as a framework in an attempt to explicate the origin and development of these incidents and thereafter the possible prophylactic measures and appropriate responses to them.Studies have shown that the mass events stemmed from government land acquisition adhere to certain patterns and characteristics that can be primarily divided into four major phases:crisis origination, crisis incubation, crisis outbreak and crisis handling. Throughout the progress, the government is able to implement solutions from pre-crisis negotiation, in-crisis intervention, and post-crisis agreements to solve effectively the conflicts and minimize the irrevocable damage to the people. Besides, from a deeper viewpoint, the real cause of these incidents is the direct clash of financial interests between the local government and the people relying on the land under the current political and social structure. In the meantime, the lack of channels for public opinions and the out-dated social management of the local administration aggravate the potential possibility of crisis. As a result, to further enhance the system reform of the rural area and its government, to establish channels for public opinion and to promote a humanitarian and capable local administration are indispensible ways to manage these incidents.