A local resident.

Conflict and misery ... but now falling prices have helped to reduce the number of forced property appropriations. Photo: Reuters

The slowdown in the Chinese economy is producing an unexpected reduction in violence and social conflict, a senior Chinese security official says.

Falling land prices and fewer transactions have reduced the number of forced land appropriations, which had accounted for an estimated two-thirds of the 187,000 ''mass incidents'' reported for 2010.

The number of mass incidents - a rubbery official category encompassing everything from small protests to riots - had more than doubled in the previous five years.

Human barricade ... a woman is stopped as she tries to prevent the demolition of housing.

Human barricade ... a woman is stopped from protesting the demolition of housing. Photo: Reuters

The official, who is a deputy head of a provincial security ministry, said the number of ''mass incidents'' peaked last year and had since fallen across the country, including in the trend-setting province of Guangdong.

He pointed to a reduction in land disputes, which he credited in part to a shift in official focus away from economic growth and also a less confrontational approach to resolving social disputes.

Lawyers, activists and officials have also observed a reduction in the frequency of violent conflict this year - excluding Tibet and Xinjiang - which they point out could be explained by a reduction in land transactions regardless of deliberate government policy.

China's economic and social-political challenges have intersected in a battle for land since the abolition of agricultural taxes in 2004.

A leading public intellectual, Professor Sun Liping, warned this year that China's ''hyperactive'' and ''malformed'' development model - premised on ''demolishing buildings everywhere'' - had fuelled the rise of vested interests and driven a shift in government policy from reform and towards ''stability preservation''.

At its essence, the ''malformed'' development model involves local governments appropriating land from peasants and urban households and transferring it to developers or government investment vehicles, where it is then used as collateral for loans or subdivided to fund ongoing construction costs.

The model depends on rising land prices and growing levels of coercive force to hold down compensation payments for the dispossessed.

Last year 4 million rural families had their land taken by local governments, which was nearly triple the number four years earlier, according to a survey by Renmin University and a Seattle think tank, Landesa.

The average mark-up between what officials gave the dispossessed and what they sold property for was 4500 per cent, the survey found, despite regulations requiring market value compensation.

This model of economic development has led to extraordinary domestic security build-up on one side - increasingly relying on sub-contracted thugs - and an increasingly bold citizens' rights movement on the other. Some analysts have warned of the ''mafia-isation'' of local government.

There have been frequent reports of landholders being crushed under bulldozers, tortured, sterilised or even thrown into cement mixers.

A report by Amnesty International released on Friday, Standing Their Ground, documented 41 cases of self-immolation by landholders from 2009 to 2011, compared with only 10 cases in the decade before. Land disputes have also led to bomb attacks on government buildings.

The rising power and resources of the security apparatus have reduced Hu Jintao's ''harmonious society'' platform, unveiled by the President in 2004, to a term of double-speak in public discourse.

The slogan has been overshadowed in official circles by the term ''stability preservation''.

The head of the China program at the Carter Centre, Liu Yawei, said a possible downgrading of the security portfolio at the upcoming 18th Party Congress could help reduce the role of force in dealing with social conflict.

''The stability preservation thing is not going to disappear overnight, but there is a push to acknowledge that the government cannot do everything, that the country will be more stable if people are allowed more decision-making power,'' Mr Liu said.