Paper short abstract:

This paper presents the pre-emption right of land in China. It is characterized by gradual limitations on land disposal once land has been transmitted among kin, as well as its replication of the adoption right. The value of both lies in the notion of transmission.

Paper long abstract:

The general frame of this study lies in a dose of determinism. We can distinguish two situations: plenty of land, scarcity of men, or plenty of men, scarcity of land. The first case corresponds to avaluation of relations between men, while in the second case land is the focal point of structures of authority.China belongs to the second type. Indeed, since at least the Ming, land knows layers of rights in which the fundamental one, inalienable, is owned by the central authority. The land's surface rights are under a regime where value is the one given by economy: exchange and use. But between those two rights, and their corresponding value, stands a third type: the preemption right. It inscribes the disposal of land in gradual limits, and is defined by two aspects: 1) bought land, once transmitted from one generation to the other, becomes "ancestral land" and 2) "ancestral land", while transferred, must first be proposed to one's brother, then to the first degree cousins, then to the second degree cousins, etc., until the end of the descent group. It can then be sold to outsiders. This customary law is not particular to China. But what appears particular is that this preemption right repeats the exact dispositions of adoption right, suggesting a partial identity between men and land with regards to transmission - as adoption in China is made for that purpose. I intend to understand this value of transmission, and its specific place among the diverse categories of exchange (inalienability, gift, commodities).