Introduction

This introductory chapter provides the contextual background of China’s land institutions and a preliminary discussion of rural land reform, with particular attention to the evolving dynamics of central-local politics and the strategy of policy innovation through experimental pilot projects. It focuses specifically on the recent round of rural land reform (2015–2019), which was implemented through a nationwide policy experimentation approach. It also outlines the scope, research objectives, and significance of the study, and explains the rationale for adopting state rescaling and policy experimentation as the core theoretical lenses. The chapter also offers a brief overview of the subsequent chapters and concludes with a discussion on the potential academic and practical contributions of the book.