Since the mid-1990s, a new land-use rights regime has gradually come into effect in China. It follows upon a series of earlier changes — land reform, collectivization and the first wave of contracting land to households — that paid attention to women’s role in publicly recognized work and provided access to land. The new regime, which has gradually come into effect as previous (usually fifteen-year) terms expired, authorizes an adjustment in land allocation which is then normally frozen for thirty years. An apparently inadvertent effect of this policy is not only the exclusion of young people from direct access to