‘Playing With Fire’ - Green-Grabbing in China

Climate change represents one of the most significant global challenges of our time, with far-reaching implications for environmental sustainability, economic development, public health, and social justice. As the impacts of climate change become increasingly evident, legal systems at the national, regional, and international levels are being called upon to develop effective frameworks for mitigation, adaptation, accountability, and resilience. Given the pivotal role that law can play in shaping climate governance, this blog series, edited by Dr Azadeh Chalabi, brings together academics, legal practitioners, and policymakers to contribute blog posts on the theme “Law and the Climate Crisis". Contributions to the series seek to foster critical engagement with the evolving relationship between law and climate change while exploring innovative legal responses to contemporary environmental challenges.

Benjamin Sutton, postgraduate student (LLM), University of Liverpool, School of Law and Social Justice.

Keywords: China's green energy transition; green grabbing; agrarian communities; photovoltaic projects; collective rights; human rights.

image from Evgeniy Alyoshin

Green-grabbing is the appropriation of land and resources for environmental ends, and it overwhelmingly affects agrarian communities. In an attempt to combat this, there are protections in place for local communities with China’s collective rights system. In China, rural land is leased by the collective, to be used rather than owned by individuals. This discussion will evaluate these protections through the lens of human rights.

The core pillars of protection for farmers and agrarian locals are the ‘Right to Contract and Manage Land (RCML)’ and the ‘Rural Land Contracting Law (RLCL)’, known as the ‘Household Responsibility System’. This system has financially protected farmers, boosting annual income by 20% since its introduction in the early 1980s, yet ‘key issues remain’, especially with photovoltaic projects. Examples from Hebei, Jiangxi and Guizho demonstrate that even with these protections, there are instances of the collective rights system failing to protect individuals’ substantive rights to land and livelihoods. Ultimately, the rights to land and livelihood from the leases to individuals tend to correlate with high economic returns. In comparison to urbanised areas like Beijing, Wuhan and Chengdu, lower-income farmers suffer from the ‘urban–rural inequality’ that ‘remains China's most prominent inequality issue’. Along with the urban-rural inequality, the criticisms of the HRS are:

‘the lack of effective mechanisms for dispute resolution, compulsory taking of land for undefined "public use" with inadequate compensation, and ineffective protection of women's land rights’ (J.D. Ping Li).

So, what is ‘public interest’ and ‘public use’? To balance the discussion, it is important to look at two cases that had contrasting results of projects developed in the ‘public interest’.

Firstly in August 2016, Zhangpu GCATG Photovoltaic Power Station, ‘Fujian Province's largest integrated photovoltaic and agricultural development project’ was fined and ordered to be demolished for illegally occupying agricultural land. The Zhangpu County Land and Resources Bureau ‘announced the results of its investigations into illegal cases in the second quarter, including this photovoltaic project’. Converting agricultural land for non-agricultural projects requires a procedural application to the Land and Resources Bureau. Yet, since September 2015, ‘the application for change had not been approved’. The reason for the rushed development, even without legal approval, was because ‘this photovoltaic power station was a key provincial project’, and ‘higher authorities required it to commence construction in 2015’. As a result, Zhangpu Zhongdian, the investor, ‘could only build while waiting for approval’. Eventually, the investor pleaded their innocence in the dispute, ‘claiming it wasted human, material, and financial resources, only to receive a lawsuit demanding the demolition of the illegal buildings’.

Secondly, in Julu County (Hebei Province), Xinyu Xinwei’s ‘100MV agrivoltaic project (PV+ greenhouse)’ illegally expropriated approximately 200 ha high quality agricultural land. The justification for this project was that it used the ‘agriculture and light complementary’ mode to ‘produce clean energy on the shed, planting cereals, corn and other crops under the shed’. The goal of PV+ projects is to develop non-agricultural projects in harmony with agricultural land, letting livestock and farms to benefit with a co-evolution process. Unfortunately, a major part of the occupied agricultural land in Julu County was wasted to grow grass while profits were prioritised from the PV project. The reason for cases like Julu County is that, ‘87.8 %’ of these projects are primarily led by energy-related enterprises’, while ‘only 9 % are spearheaded by agriculture-related enterprises’. A substantial majority of these photovoltaic projects ‘(70.7 %) utilise cropland, either partially or entirely, for their project sites’. For both of these cases, the vague definition of the ‘public interest’ was merely to justify and mitigate the purposes of the PV developments as there was little benefit for the local agrarian communities.

While evident green-grabbing in Europe can be blocked by A1P1 or A8 & A17 of the ECHR, China’s collective rights system does not favour the individual as much as the ECHR (as demonstrated in Julu County). Further individual protections such as UNDROP, UDHR, ICESCR and UNDRIP are either not recognised or are not enforced in China. In Esteve-Jorda et al’s review, it is noted that 74% of global green-grabbing cases violate the right to livelihood, and 85% include issues with land dispossession. China is no exception as, in the hierarchy of Chinese socialism, the state can overrule the aforementioned protections and ‘expropriate or requisition land’ with vaguely defined justification and appropriate compensation. More instances have happened in the past, leading to protests and conflict like in Sichuan in 2004, and Wukan and Guangdong in the 2010s. Civil participation is encouraged at the level of the HRS, however when the state expropriates land in the ‘public interest’, there is less room for discourse. On a positive note, China has implemented the Rural Collective Economic Organisations Law of 2025 that promises to prevent these arbitrary land seizures by government authorities through clarifying governance structures and consolidating farmers’ decision-making power.

Overall, it is clear that large investors and local government officials have abused the idea of the ‘public interest’. From a human rights perspective, the farmers and agrarian communities would have a larger stake in the procedural process if they were backed by substantive rights like A17 and A23 of the UDHR, and A1P1, A8 and A17 of the ECHR. The RCEOL seeks to bridge the gap between the current HRS system and these articles, with clarification and improved participation. In Julu and Zhangpu, there is evidence to suggest that a well-supported ‘PV+’ that harmonised both agricultural and non-agricultural projects would have seen more support. Yet, without sufficient participation from the affected population, state-backed PV companies like Xinyu Xinwei can find exploits by providing compensation and justifying it with the idea of the ‘public interest’. Regardless, RCEOL and supported PV+ projects are a promising step forward to protect farmers' right to participation, their livelihood and to protect their contracted land. Yet, with China’s push for global green energy dominance it is hard to predict the result of future ventures.