As a strategy of contesting the reshuffling of central-local powercaused by the 1994 tax sharing system, land finance has becomepolitically popular at various levels of government, including town-ship government and village cadres. Meanwhile, driven primarilyby rural industrialization in the early stage of opening reform, theeconomy of peri-urban areas in the PRD and YRD has been stronglycharacterized by the manufacturing industry. Motivated by the GDPand tax contributions of the manufacturing industry, local govern-ments most often lease land for industrial use under the strict landquota system.