Separating Citizenization and Land Requisition: New Urbanization in Beijing's Rural-Urban Fringe Area

Through rapid urbanization, Beijing is entering into the advanced stage of industrialization and urbanization, while it, like many other cities, is faced with issues of low-quality urbanization and citizenization. Under the infl uences of both urbanization and suburbanization, the sprawling rural-urban fringe area becomes a tough issue to resolve. The reconstruction of 50 key villages in Beijing’s rural-urban fringe area that was started in 2010 has initially changed the citizenization-land requisition coupling model through recombining land use right, household registration, and social security to make farmers become new-type citizens with land use right. The practice in Beijing reveals that the fringe issues are caused by the new and old dual structures which are formed as a result of the urban-rural dual land system, and that the path to new urbanization in China is to separate citizenization from land requisition, so as to achieve the transformation towards a proactive urbanization.