Participation in Chinese land use planning: Opportunities and obstacles on the road to effectiveness and legitimacy

China has entered a period of rural and urban transformation which brings up serious challenges for sustainable development on various levels of geographical scale and creates growing discrepancies between regions with respect to economic prospects for farming communities. The separation between urban and rural planning in contemporary China raises important questions about community participation, the role of local and regional authorities, interaction between governments, markets and civil society. Some Western countries have faced similar problems in the last decades and developed sophisticated systems of rural development which effectively address the rural-urban divide. A pivotal element is public participation. Participation in the planning process is at the heart of the emerging communicative paradigm in planning theory. So far the emerging body of literature about participatory planning in Western countries is in need of translation into specific applications tailor made to Chines governance. This paper builds on selected building blocks developed in state of the art international planning theory. The theoretical framework is elaborated taking into consideration idiosyncrasies of Chinese land use laws and regulations. The results of our empirical research suggests that China has developed elementary bottom-up practices starting in the ninenteen nineties. These practices have triggered new laws, decrees and ordinances by various levels of government. Two arguments stand out in the emerging debate about participation in land use planning i.e. effectiveness and ligitimacy. In the context of changing institutions social relations and emerging markets these concepts are in need of closer inspection and discussion. This paper identifies vital clues to participation of stakeholders.