Seeks to explore the institutional arrangements that have enabled the establishment of a credible and socially accepted cropland tenure system in China. For this purpose, the chapter starts with a broad review of the national policy and law-making process that dictates property rights for agricultural land. In addition, the chapter analyses China’s land property rights structure. It is argued that the restraint which the central government exercised in leaving land ownership ambiguous—the creation of ‘intentional institutional ambiguity’—offers the greater part of the explanation of why the cropland tenure system functions
Keywords: Deliberate institutional ambiguity, land ownership, national land law and policy, tenure security