300 million farmers with no connection to land must be taken seriously; the land system requires long-term planning
■Everyone must remember that we have 300 million farmers with no connection to land, and this is a terrifying number. Last year's latest data shows that the total number of landless farmers has now reached 112 million, and adding the 200 million people born after 1994 who were never allocated land in the first place, by 2020 there will be a total of about 300 million people with no connection to land. No matter how the land system is reformed, it has little bearing on the interests of these 300 million people. What will these 300 million people rely on in the future? The possible path is a social assistance mechanism and the establishment of fair social values, and our social system must give this thorough consideration in advance. China's land system has now reached the point where long-term planning is imperative.
How to protect arable land bears on the sustainable development of the Chinese nation
Should China's arable land be protected? How can it be protected effectively? The answer to the first question is of course yes, so the second question must find a good answer.
If the question of arable land protection had raised some controversy ten years ago, today that controversy no longer exists, and society has reached a consensus. Although the 1.8 billion mu arable land red line we proposed back then now seems to have produced good results, with arable land expanding to 2.03 billion mu, an increase of 200 million mu, we cannot simply be optimistic about the increase in the total, and the structural problem deserves study.
When the Ministry of Land and Resources released its data in 2013, I was one of the experts interpreting it. At the time I raised the structural problem: the data began to be surveyed in 2009 and was released in 2013. Among the data with relatively large changes in between were Heilongjiang, where a single province added 64 million mu; Jilin Province added 22.4 million mu; and Inner Mongolia added 29 million mu. These three provinces alone added 116 million mu. You must understand that these three provinces are all purely northern regions, and the newly added arable land is still in relatively backward areas such as rural ones. There is also some newly added arable land on slopes above 25 degrees, as well as arable land along rivers and streams, and 50 million mu that can barely be cultivated because of pollution. The output rate of this arable land is not high, and 2.14 mu in the north is equivalent to only one mu in the south. Therefore, if there is "addition in the north and reduction in the south," it is very likely that the total of 2 billion mu of arable land may not have a higher output than the original 1.8 billion mu.
Last year I already wrote an article that, on the basis of Professor Cai's research on the quantity and quality of arable land, also introduced the concepts of space and time. In terms of time, some land is facing degradation, and desertification in some areas is very serious and still expanding, which is unfavorable for our future protection. On the other hand, in terms of space, the center of gravity of arable land is continuously shifting northward, and the direct consequence of this northward shift is a change in grain structure, because different regions are best suited to different types of grain crops. There are huge crises here. In 1998, the north-south dividing line of our arable land was in the south of the west of the Qinling Mountains and Huaihe River; in 2013 it moved north to the south of Kaifeng; by 2005 it moved further north to the west of Luoyang; in 2010 it moved north to Fengqiu in Anyang; and by the end of last year it had already moved north to Handan in Hebei. Yet Jilin Province in the northeast, near the Sanjiang Plain, has farmland being left fallow, with land but no one to cultivate it.
Therefore, the question concerning arable land is not whether it should still be protected now that the total has reached 2 billion mu, but how to protect it. There is much knowledge to be applied here. Whether it is done well or not bears on the sustainable development of the Chinese nation.
The Earth is the source of all things, and land is the source of all production. To this day we still do not seem to have fully recognized that this is the foundation and basis of survival and development.
The land system requires long-term planning
Why can't China protect its land? The problem lies in the fact that for a long time we have emphasized the economy and neglected society. Urbanization is the theme of our economic development today. Last year's latest data shows that urban construction land amounts to about 525 million mu, and the urbanized population accounted for 54.7% last year.
But at the same time as urbanization, we have not been idle in rural areas either, and it is even more serious. Rural construction land is 4 times that of urbanization land. With the expansion of rural construction land, among the 13 million people entering cities each year, 2.6 million farmers no longer own land. Last year's latest data shows that the total number of landless farmers has now reached 112 million, and adding the 200 million people born after 1994 who were never allocated land in the first place, by 2020 there will be a total of about 300 million farmers with no connection to land. No matter how the land is reformed, it has little bearing on the interests of these 300 million farmers.
What will these 300 million people rely on in the future? The possible path is a social assistance mechanism and the establishment of fair social values. Why are our cities getting bigger and bigger while rural areas get smaller and smaller? It is because we emphasize the economy and neglect society. Only economic development is pursued, and cities are obviously conducive to economic development. Therefore, the land area of cities keeps expanding. Another major motive for urban expansion is land finance. In 2010, land transfer fees in China's land finance reached 2.7 trillion yuan, and at the time the media all reported that this was too much. The government also felt it was too much and began to control it. But as everyone knows, despite control after control, the main line of economic development remains unchanged, the general trend of urbanization remains unchanged, and this figure is still rising. Land transfer fees hit a historic high last year: 4.36 trillion yuan. Why? Because in the process of urbanization, arable land is instead the easiest to expropriate, since it basically does not involve demolition and relocation issues. The role of some local governments in this is also somewhat ambiguous; our government is both coach, referee, and player. The government can both plan and approve. As a result, in some places, land can be acquired at a price of tens of thousands of yuan per mu and then transferred at a price of one million.
Everyone must remember that we have 300 million farmers with no connection to land, and this is a terrifying number. By around 2025, we will not only have 350 million migrant workers, but also the problem of 300 million elderly people, and the elderly issue also involves the issue of elderly people in rural areas. By 2020 China's rural aging rate will reach 20%, and we will have 300 million elderly people before we even wait until 2025.
In this way, how to solve the pension problem and how to solve the problem of migrant workers are matters our social system must give thorough consideration to in advance.
China's land system has now reached the point where long-term planning is imperative. Last year, the central government entrusted the Chinese Academy of Sciences with drafting an overall design plan for China's land system reform. It includes reform of five systems, and three have already been advanced this year. These mainly include the arable land system, the system for collective land entering the market, and the question of whether rural collective land has property rights, with preparations to grant farmers more property rights, because without assets where do property returns come from? In addition, the problems of rural shortages of grassland and land are also involved, and good implementation is expected.
Finally, the adjustment of the land system cannot be separated from the research, investigation, and policy recommendations of high-end think tanks. Today, with economic development as the main focus, professions such as geography and natural resources are not given enough attention, while economics is sometimes prone to short-sightedness. Therefore, as researchers, we have a great deal of work to do, including making more voices heard.