Restructuring Land Development Rights Through Linked Games: A Contract-Chain Analysis of Urban Village Redevelopment in Guangzhou, China

Urban village redevelopment in China requires existing claims to collectively owned land to be reorganized into an implementable redevelopment arrangement, yet the project-level mechanisms through which land development rights are restructured remain insufficiently explained. This article develops a contract-chain framework and examines the redevelopment of an anonymized urban village in Guangzhou from 2008 to 2025. Drawing on long-term field engagement, more than 50 interviews and follow-up conversations with 31 participants, and planning, collective, contractual, and litigation materials, the study identifies three interdependent contractual settlements concerning collective representation, the allocation of development rights, and the exchange of existing use rights. The analysis shows that linked games across political, economic, and social domains connect these settlements by reshaping resources, expectations, and constraints across stages; these linkages can facilitate agreement but can also transmit conflict when sanctions or administrative pressure undermine trust and legitimacy. The study contributes a processual account of development-rights restructuring in which governance relations are progressively stabilized in institutional texts and spatial rules; because the evidence comes from a high-value, full-demolition-and-reconstruction project in the Pearl River Delta, the framework’s applicability to other redevelopment contexts requires further testing.