Land Grabbing and Land Justice Movement in Taiwan
Li-Min Liao, Shih-Jung Hsu
China University of Technology, Taipei, Taiwan; National Chengchi University, Taipei, Taiwan
The state in Taiwan played the leading role in the process of capital accumulation, and
land was basically treated as economic production factor. In order to promote economic growth
which is usually equal to public interest, the state frequently implements the power of eminent
domain (or land expropriation, taking) to deprive land ownership or property right through the
mechanism of land use planning. However, land is a precious resource needed for human
development. A piece of land or a community can be a specific place for human identity. The
relation between human and place cannot be separated in this sense. A subjective and valuable
sense of place is very important for land use policy and planning. Thus, several people could
define variety meanings of land.
Members of a particular geographic and political community should be included in
planning process to ensure a future that is environmentally healthy and economically and
socially vibrant at the local and regional levels. Unfortunately, because land use planning in
Taiwan is a matter of the distribution of benefits and burdens, those who hold the most power
tend to receive the most benefits and they try to exclude those powerlessness. Exclusion occurs
through the mobilization of bias in the political process. Therefore, development-induced
displacement (DID) has become a serious social problem.
Numerous protests have emerged in recent years in Taiwan. The Taiwan Rural Front, an
advocacy NGO organization tries to help those farmers whose land have been deprived by the
state. The protest activities led by the TRF are called the Land Justice Movement, which has
great influence in Taiwan society recently (Hsu, 2017). The goal of the paper is to show the
serious problem of land grabbing and forced evictions in Taiwan. The TRF and Land Justice
Movement try to stop the authoritarian control of land use planning and to bring in deliberative
democracy in it.
Event: Annual World Bank Conference on Land and Poverty 2019
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