A Comprehensive Analysis of Chinese Farmers' Right to the Distribution of Collective Land Income
The distribution of collective land income has become one of the important sources of income for Chinese farmers, and those who enjoy the right to the distribution of collective income have strong demands regarding the distribution of that income. The right to the distribution of collective land income is a specific type of farmers' collective membership right, and is also the most important category within the right to the distribution of collective income. On the basis of defining the concept, this paper constructs institutions related to the right to the distribution of collective land income from the four aspects of the rights subject, the rights object, the distribution mechanism and the remedy system, using the basic principles of civil law, and proposes the establishment of relevant supporting institutions.
For a rather long period, China's rural areas remained in an economically underdeveloped state, and opportunities for collective income distribution were few. Because people did not depend on this portion of income in their daily lives, farmers paid very little attention to the distribution of collective income, especially collective land income. With the development of the social commodity economy, rural collective land, as a scarce resource and fixed asset, was no longer used solely as cultivated land, but was extensively used to generate collective income. In addition, as more and more collective land has been expropriated, expropriation compensation, as collective land income, has been transformed through distribution into particularly considerable wealth for rural households. The distribution of collective land income has become one of the important sources of income for Chinese farmers, and those who enjoy the right to the distribution of collective income have strong demands regarding the distribution of that income. However, because there is no clear protection of the right and no refined distribution method, disputes over distribution rights have become increasingly prominent. The report of the 18th National Congress of the Communist Party of China, the 2013 “No. 1 Document” of the State Council and other important documents all emphasized the need to protect farmers' property rights, especially farmers' land contractual management rights, homestead land use rights and the right to the distribution of collective income. The author intends to conduct research in this paper on the most important category within the right to the distribution of collective income, namely the right to the distribution of collective land income.
I. Definition of the Concept of Farmers' Right to the Distribution of Collective Land Income
(i) Definition of Farmers' Right to the Distribution of Collective Land Income
Wen Jiabao once emphasized at the Central Rural Work Conference: “Land contractual management rights, homestead land use rights and the right to the distribution of collective income are lawful property rights granted to farmers by law.” Academia has also conducted related research on the “right to the distribution of collective income.” Qiao Xinsheng believes that the Premier's speech actually ensured that farmers' interests would not be harmed by consolidating and improving land contractual management rights and the right to the distribution of collective income. [1] Zhang Li believes that farmers' right to the distribution of collective income and farmers' usufructuary rights are together called “property rights granted to farmers by law.” Zhang Fan and Sun Shuyun believe that collectives can obtain considerable income through centralized leasing of land, transfer, expropriation and investment in establishing industry, and that farmers' sharing of the property rights income after the capitalization of agricultural land based on their collective membership status will become an important rights component of collective membership rights. Guan Hongyan believes that the right of farmers' collective members to distribute distributable collective income based on their membership qualification is the collective income distribution right of farmers' collective members. Some scholars also distinguish collective income rights from the beneficial capacity of collective members, holding that the beneficial capacity of collective members is the capacity of collective members to enjoy benefits from collective ownership or obtain distributed benefits according to the management rules of collective ownership or the collective's benefit distribution plan.
On the basis of the research of these scholars, the author believes that the right to the distribution of collective land income is the most important category within the right to the distribution of collective income. From the perspective of interest relationships, collectively owned land must be closely connected with the individual interests of collective members. This does not mean dividing collective land into shares owned by each farmer, but the law should provide that the benefits generated by collective land ownership should be enjoyed jointly by all members, and farmers as collective members should be the ultimate enjoyers of the benefits generated by land ownership. Even if collective land ownership and use rights are separated, China's special land system means that the farmers' collective remains the owner of the collective land and enjoys collective land income based on ownership. Correspondingly, the individual farmer, as one of the collective members within the subject of collective land ownership, naturally enjoys the economic benefits contained in collective ownership, and therefore also enjoys the right to participate in the distribution of collective land income. Therefore, farmers' right to the distribution of collective land income refers to the right of an individual farmer, as a member of the farmers' collective, to participate in the distribution of collective land income by virtue of the ownership he shares jointly with other members. This right is in essence the right of a farmer, based on his collective membership status, to request the farmers' collective to which he belongs to distribute equally the income generated on collective land.
(ii) The Nature and Characteristics of Farmers' Right to the Distribution of Collective Land Income
Farmers' right to the distribution of collective land income is a specific type of farmers' collective membership right. Both Guan Hongyan (2013) and Chen Xiaojun (2014) classify the right to the distribution of collective income as part of the self-benefit rights within farmers' collective membership rights. The Property Law expresses the concept of collective ownership in the manner of “immovable and movable property belonging to the collective ownership of the members of this collective,” highlighting the rights status of the individual farmer as the subject of “collective membership rights” within the collective land ownership system. The indivisibility of rural collective land ownership does not mean that the collective and collective members are also indivisible. The separation of personality between China's farmers' collective and collective members is not complete, but this cannot deny that the farmers' collective and collective members are objectively two realities that exist. For farmers who are collective members, rather than caring about some symbolic sense of rural collective ownership, it is better to focus on what rights exist over rural collective ownership and how each collective member can realize such rights, namely an equal and realizable right to income distribution. Collective membership rights are a kind of property right, and the right to the distribution of collective land income has the characteristic of a property right directly accompanying collective membership rights, but at the same time it also has certain personal rights characteristics. Only those recognized as members of the rural collective enjoy this right, and the right to the distribution of collective land income can neither be inherited nor transferred, nor can it be subject to compulsory enforcement.
II. Institutional Construction of Chinese Farmers' Right to the Distribution of Collective Land Income
The formation of the structure of collective property rights relationships is a dynamic and complex process of construction. On the basis of collective membership rights, Chinese farmers spontaneously use various principles to construct a collective land income distribution system that conforms to the maximization of their own interests, in order to realize the right to the distribution of collective land income. The author intends to construct institutions related to the right to the distribution of collective land income from the four aspects of the rights subject, the rights object, the distribution mechanism and the remedy system, using the basic principles of civil law.
(i) The Rights Subject of the Right to the Distribution of Collective Land Income
As stated above, farmers' right to the distribution of collective land income is one category within collective membership rights, so the prerequisite for possessing the right to the distribution of collective land income is that one must have rural collective membership qualification. From existing legal expressions, there are two types of qualified farmers' collective members: one is the individual farmer, and the other is the farmer household, that is, the farming household. The significance of the existence of the farming household is that it can serve as a unit for obtaining interests under certain conditions so that the interests ultimately rest securely in the hands of the individual farmer; the individual farmer is the ultimately relevant party in terms of interests. Therefore, the key to determining the subject of farmers' right to the distribution of collective land income lies in the determination of the membership qualification of the individual farmer. At present, there is no unified specific standard for determining collective membership qualification. In practice, the standards for determining collective membership qualification are spontaneously formed by rural collectives and are decided and reflected through village collective voting and other means. In most rural collectives, the targets of collective land income distribution are persons who had household registration in the village at birth. Scholars hold different views on this. Yang Yijie believes that land income should be distributed according to a legally principled membership right, that is, the acquisition of farmers' collective membership rights should be established on the basis of legal acts; members' rights and obligations are acquired through contract or joining an association, rather than through household registration or their geographical relationship with the village community. Wang Liming believes that in principle household registration should be used as the standard for determining membership qualification, and beyond that, other factors should also be considered, including “obligations fulfilled to the collective,” “use of collective land as basic living security,” “birth and adoption,” and “marriage and divorce,” while at the same time the customary law formed by the collective over the long term should be respected. The views of academia cannot be directly used to resolve conflicts in the determination of membership qualification in reality, and current legislation does not clearly provide standards for confirming collective membership qualification, so various disputes cannot be avoided. The author believes that the practice of determining membership qualification solely through village voting is unfair. It is also necessary to clearly provide for the determination of collective membership qualification in the form of laws and regulations, combining village self-governance with state compulsion and respecting local customs, in order to achieve fairness.