[roy_x]

>I'm a little skeptical a "revolution" will ever improve things (in the short term). Revolutions are generally costly in almost every way possible.

I am not promoting the idea of revolution. In fact, I think it is bad for almost everyone. My point is that any wise man in the current administration should stop it before too late.

>China's growth and prosperity don't seem to justify one (at this point in time).

Maybe I am too pessimistic. Last year, the riot-control budgets( literally called stability-maintaining in China) is almost the same as the military expenditure.

>How do villagers sell their land now? I thought market sales were already being done?

By constitution law, in China, urban lands belong to government, and rural lands belong to villages, however, it is not allowed(by a policy made by government) for villages to sell their land to real-estate merchants directly, they can only sell lands to the government in a price made by the government. In this way, governments become the only provider of available lands, and they can charge as much as they want.

[Volpe]

I was under the impression (I could definitely be wrong) that private sales were still occurring despite the constitution. (Government policy, peoples anti-policy?) ;-)

[roy_x]

It is a little bit more complicated.

There are a few people buying those privately-built house(literally it is called small-property-houses in China) because it is much cheaper compared to market price.

However, there are some big flaws of those house:

1, It is not protected by law, the house can't be registered under buyer's name. It has been reported that some people living in those house was driven out by the government or the land owner.

2, As a buyer, you can not bind house-registry(namely hukou) with those house, so, children will not have the right to attend nearby school because those house are not belonging to any school district.

3, Also the land owner will be punished for building those kind of houses.

In all, although there are a few private-built house near to big cities like Beijing, generally it is not an option.