Based on extensive in-depth interviews and primary documents, Chapter 5 presents a case study of a middle-performing county in central China to illustrate the core arguments of the book. It shows how the local state reassigns rural land rights in an effort to drive urbanization and industrialization. It provides data on how local officials respond to performance targets by using land to attract investment in both real estate and industry. The chapter also provides data on the county’s debt-fueled infrastructural development employing land-backed LGFVs and presents data on economic activity and fiscal revenue. The chapter illustrates the nature of popular dissatisfaction over the reassignment of land rights and how local officials use law to deflect discontent and conflict away from the state itself, while exacerbating conflict between villagers and village collectives and among neighbors. It shows how villagers, unable to effectively challenge the state, seek to exclude others from sharing in land-taking compensation funds by using contested ideas about household registration (hukou), marriage, village charters, and land contracts. Villagers manifest legal consciousness, including awareness of legal aid, and engage in legal mobilization, including negotiation, mediation, petition, litigation, and protest.