How can rural reform be deepened? Start with the property rights system

In the current critical period and important juncture of building a moderately prosperous society in all respects, the countryside, as the weakest link in the process of achieving moderate prosperity, has boarded the “Reform Express” and embarked on a journey of deepening reform advanced in a systematic, holistic and coordinated manner. The “Comprehensive Implementation Plan for Deepening Rural Reform” issued not long ago identified 5 major areas on which deepening rural reform should focus, among which reform of the rural collective property rights system ranks first.

Land is the source of farmers' livelihood and the foundation of national stability. The rural collective ownership system, based on collective ownership of land, is the institutional guarantee for achieving common prosperity among farmers; the rural collective property rights system bears on the realization of many reform goals and involves the interests of hundreds of millions of farmers. It has a foundational significance and role for the entire rural economic system. Therefore, advancing reform of the rural collective property rights system is very necessary and also very urgent.

⟦NL> Reform of the rural collective property rights system must take protecting the rights of the broad masses of farmers as its core, deepen reform of the rural land system, advance in a categorized manner the confirmation of rural collective assets to households and reform of the shareholding cooperative system, and deepen forestry and water conservancy reform. The specific path is to promote, in terms of institutional design, the “confirmation of rights” and “empowerment” of rural collective property rights; and, in terms of practical innovation, to accelerate “activating rights” so that farmers truly enjoy the benefits.

It is necessary to confirm rights accurately and solve the problem of who has a share and how much. On the one hand, the family assets must be clearly understood. Rural collective assets are diverse in type, including resource-based assets such as land, operating assets such as factories, and non-operating assets such as schools and roads. The progress of property rights system reform for various types of collective assets differs and the requirements vary, so it must be advanced in a categorized manner. This is especially true for the first two categories of assets. For resource-based assets, it is necessary to implement collective ownership, stabilize farmers' contracting rights, invigorate land management rights, and do a good job in rights confirmation, registration and certification; for operating assets, the focus is on how to convert assets into shares and quantify them to farmers in a fairer, more reasonable, open and transparent way, realizing “farmers become shareholders and assets become equity,” and realizing the transformation from “common ownership” to “ownership by shares.” On the other hand, the number of people must be clarified, exploring specific methods for defining the membership status of rural collective economic organizations and solving the difficult problem of identifying members of rural collective economic organizations.

It is necessary to fully empower rights and solve the problem of what use they are. Farmers should be given the right to fairly share in the appreciation gains of land, the scope of land expropriation should be reasonably defined, land expropriation procedures should be standardized, and a reasonable, standardized and diversified protection mechanism for farmers whose land is expropriated should be improved; land contracting and management rights should be given more complete powers, so that farmers enjoy the powers of possession, use, income, transfer, and mortgage and guarantee of contracted land management rights with respect to contracted land, and farmers should be allowed to use contracted management rights as shares to develop agricultural industrialized operations, so that the four powers contained in land contracting and management rights, namely possession, use, income and disposal, become more complete; the powers of farmers' housing property rights should be expanded, the rural homestead system should be reformed and improved, farmers' housing property rights should be clearly defined, a paid use system for homesteads and a voluntary paid exit mechanism should be explored, and effective ways for mortgage, guarantee and transfer of farmers' housing property rights should be explored; the powers of shares in collective operating assets should be expanded, so that farmers not only enjoy the powers of possession and income, but should also have the power of disposal, that is, they can mortgage, guarantee, transfer and inherit them, and develop various forms of farmer shareholding cooperation.

Confirming and empowering rights are the foundation, clarifying farmers' lawful rights; activating rights is the form of realization, and only by innovating in activating rights can farmers' rights be further materialized and real income obtained. Compared with the institutional design of confirming and empowering rights, activating rights relies more on exploration and innovation in practice in various places. For example, the rural comprehensive property rights circulation and transaction system built in Huzhou City, Zhejiang Province, was accompanied by the introduction of administrative measures for rural comprehensive property rights circulation and transactions, determining 9 major categories of trading varieties to enter platform transactions. To advance the circulation and transaction of forest rights, Huzhou, Zhejiang, using counties and districts as units, established a forest resource trading platform integrating collective rights management, forest rights trading and asset evaluation, providing financing guarantees, small loans, asset evaluation, forest rights mortgages, and so on.

A piece of land, a tile-roofed cottage, all are concerns for the people. Reform of the rural collective property rights system involves China's basic economic system and the basic rural operating system, involves all aspects of the economy, law and society, and involves the interest demands of different subjects. The problems are very complex. In advancing reform, it is necessary to adhere to the correct direction of reform, giving play both to the superiority of the collective and to the enthusiasm of farmers; to persist in advancing institutional and mechanism innovation, hold the bottom line of preventing collective assets from being eroded and farmers' interests from being harmed, and establish a new mechanism for rural collective economic operation that meets the requirements of the market economy; and to persist in respecting the wishes of the farmer masses, ensuring that the farmer masses become participants in and beneficiaries of the reform.