Comprehensive Implementation Plan for Deepening Rural Reform Issued by the General Office of the CPC Central Committee and the General Office of the State Council
Xinhua News Agency, Beijing, November 2 dispatch Recently, the General Office of the CPC Central Committee and the General Office of the State Council issued the "Comprehensive Implementation Plan for Deepening Rural Reform" and issued a notice requiring all regions and departments to conscientiously implement it in light of actual conditions.
The main contents of the "Comprehensive Implementation Plan for Deepening Rural Reform" are as follows.
⟦NL> Rural reform is an important part of comprehensively deepening reform. According to the decisions and arrangements of the Party Central Committee and the State Council, various rural reforms are being carried out solidly, and pilot work on some important reform matters is being advanced in an orderly manner. At present, China's economic development has entered a new normal, new industrialization, informatization, urbanization, and agricultural modernization continue to advance, rural economic and social changes are profound, and the interest relationships involved in rural reform are more complex, the goals more diverse, the influencing factors more varied, and the tasks more arduous. Rural reform is highly comprehensive, and it is difficult to achieve results by advancing alone; we must establish systematic thinking, do a good job in overall planning and top-level design, accurately identify the key link and main contradiction that affect the whole situation, and further improve the scientific nature of rural reform decision-making. We must grasp the direction of rural reform from an overall perspective, propose the overall goals, major principles, basic tasks, and important paths for deepening rural reform, better guide and coordinate various rural reforms from an overall perspective, strengthen the connection and coordination among various reforms, and release the comprehensive effects of reform to the greatest extent.
According to the unified deployment of the central government, and proceeding from improving the systematization, overall coordination, and synergy of rural reform, this comprehensive implementation plan for deepening rural reform is specially formulated.
I. Overall Requirements
(1) Guiding ideology. Comprehensively implement the spirit of the 18th National Congress of the Party and the Second, Third, and Fourth Plenary Sessions of the 18th Central Committee, take Deng Xiaoping Theory, the important thought of “Three Represents”, and the Scientific Outlook on Development as guidance, thoroughly implement the spirit of General Secretary Xi Jinping's series of important speeches, conscientiously implement the decisions and arrangements of the Party Central Committee and the State Council, actively adapt to the new normal of economic development, closely focus on the strategic layout of comprehensively building a moderately prosperous society, comprehensively deepening reform, comprehensively governing the country according to law, and comprehensively strictly governing the Party, continuously consolidate and improve the basic rural economic system of socialism with Chinese characteristics, accelerate the transformation of the agricultural development mode, improve the systems and mechanisms for safeguarding national food security, promoting sustainable agricultural development, and sustaining increases in farmers' incomes, focus on removing institutional obstacles caused by the urban-rural dual structure, provide institutional guarantees for accelerating the modernization of agriculture and rural areas with Chinese characteristics, and lay a solid foundation for realizing the “Two Centenary Goals” and the Chinese Dream of the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation.
(2) Target tasks. By 2020, the protection systems for various types of ownership economies in rural areas, especially the ownership of rural collective assets, farmers' land contractual management rights, and farmers' property rights, will be more complete; the new agricultural management system, agricultural support and protection system, agricultural socialized service system, agricultural science and technology innovation system, and rural financial system suited to the characteristics of agriculture and rural areas will be more sound; the systems and mechanisms for integrated urban-rural economic and social development will be basically established; the rural social governance system and rural grassroots organizational system will be more complete; farmers' democratic rights will be better safeguarded; agricultural and rural laws and regulations will be further improved and strengthened; the level of the rule of law at the rural grassroots level will be further raised; the level of agricultural modernization and farmers' living standards will be further improved; and rural economic and social development will be more dynamic.
(3) Basic principles
1. Adhere to the common development of multiple forms of ownership economy in rural areas. On the basis of adhering to the public ownership nature of land, strengthen the protection of the lawful property rights and interests of various rural ownership economic organizations and farmers' households, grant rural ownership economic organizations equal market subject status, ensure that they participate fairly in market competition according to law and receive equal protection under the law, and promote the common development of rural collective economy, farmer household economy, farmers' cooperative economy, various private and joint-stock economies, supply and marketing cooperative economy, and state-owned economy such as state-owned farms and forest farms.
2. Adhere to and improve the basic rural management system. Grasp the relationship between collective ownership of land and household contractual management, keep the existing rural land contractual relationship stable and unchanged for a long time, implement collective ownership, stabilize farmers' contractual rights, and liberalize land management rights, implementing the “separation of three rights”. Adhere to the foundational position of household management in agriculture, innovate agricultural management organization methods, and promote the common development of household management, collective management, cooperative management, and enterprise management.
3. Adhere to the direction of socialist market economy reform. Adjust production relations that do not suit the requirements of the development of rural social productive forces, improve the rural economic system that meets the requirements of the socialist market economy, fully give play to the decisive role of the market in resource allocation, strengthen state support and protection for agriculture, and promote agriculture to shift as soon as possible to intensive development that gives equal weight to quantity, quality, and efficiency, focuses on improving competitiveness, focuses on agricultural technological innovation, and focuses on sustainability.
4. Adhere to safeguarding farmers' rights and interests. Take realizing, safeguarding, and developing the fundamental interests of the broad masses of farmers as the starting point and foothold of deepening rural reform, effectively safeguard farmers' lawful economic interests, and respect farmers' democratic rights.
5. Adhere to overall coordination. Take into overall consideration agricultural and rural development, urban and rural reform and development, and fairness and efficiency.
6. Adhere to gradual progress and piloting first. Give play to the pioneering spirit of the grassroots and the masses; under the premise of grasping the direction and upholding the bottom line, encourage active exploration and bold innovation, and allow differentiated and transitional institutional and policy arrangements. Conscientiously organize rural reform pilot work and promptly summarize experience that can be replicated and promoted. For major reforms that break through existing laws and regulations, report for approval according to procedures, obtain authorization, and carry out pilots within a certain scope.
7. Adhere to the Party's leadership over work related to “agriculture, rural areas, and farmers”. We must always take strengthening the Party's leadership over work related to “agriculture, rural areas, and farmers” as the political guarantee for advancing rural reform and development, and improve the ability and level of doing work related to “agriculture, rural areas, and farmers” according to law. Under the unified leadership of the central government, actively and steadily deepen various rural reforms.
II. Key Areas and Major Measures
Comprehensively deepening rural reform involves the fields of economy, politics, culture, society, ecological civilization, and grassroots Party building, and involves multiple ownership economic entities in rural areas. At present and for some time to come, deepening rural reform must focus on five major areas: the rural collective property rights system, the agricultural management system, the agricultural support and protection system, the systems and mechanisms for integrated urban-rural development, and the rural social governance system. For the core issues of reform in these five major areas, it is necessary to clarify the general direction, main contents, and major policies and countermeasures, and further clarify reform thinking.
(1) Deepen reform of the rural collective property rights system
The rural collective ownership system based on collective ownership of land is an important form of socialist public ownership and an institutional guarantee for realizing common prosperity for farmers. The rural collective economic organization system established on the basis of collective ownership of land, interwoven with the villagers' self-governance organization system, constitutes the basic framework of China's rural governance and provides basic institutional support for the modernization of agriculture and rural areas with Chinese characteristics. To establish and improve a rural collective property rights system that meets the requirements of the socialist market economy system and the reality of the primary stage of socialism, we must take protecting the rights of members of farmers' collective economic organizations as the core, focus on clarifying the ownership of rural collective property rights and granting farmers more property rights, explore effective organizational forms and management methods for rural collective ownership economy under socialist market economy conditions, ensure that the fruits of collective economic development benefit all members of the collective, further give play to the superiority of the collective economy, and further mobilize the enthusiasm of members of collective economic organizations.
1. Deepen reform of the rural land system. Uphold the “three bottom lines” of not changing the public ownership nature of land, not breaking through the red line of cultivated land, and not damaging farmers' interests, and prevent subversive mistakes. The basic direction of deepening rural land system reform is: implement collective ownership, stabilize farmers' contractual rights, and liberalize land management rights. Implementing collective ownership means implementing the legal provision that “immovable property and movable property owned collectively by farmers belong to the collective ownership of the members of the collective,” clearly defining farmers' collective membership rights, clarifying the ownership of collective land property rights, and achieving a clear subject of collective property rights. Stabilizing farmers' contractual rights means fairly distributing collective land contractual management rights to each farmer household in the collective organization according to law. Liberalizing land management rights means allowing contracted farmer households to allocate land management rights according to law and voluntarily to entities with the willingness and ability to operate, and developing various forms of appropriately scaled operations.
First, carry out pilot reforms of rural land expropriation, market entry of collective operating construction land, and the homestead system. Promptly summarize experience and continuously improve it to form reform results that can be replicated and promoted. The basic thinking for rural land expropriation system reform is: narrow the scope of land expropriation, standardize land expropriation procedures, improve reasonable, standardized, and diversified safeguard mechanisms for farmers whose land is expropriated, establish a land value-added income distribution mechanism that takes into account the state, collective, and individuals, and reasonably increase individual income. The basic thinking for reform of the collective operating construction land system is: allow existing rural collective construction land designated by overall land use planning and urban-rural planning for operational uses such as industrial and mining storage and commercial services to enjoy equal rights with state-owned construction land, and, on the premise of complying with planning, use control, and lawful acquisition, allow transfer, lease, and shareholding, and improve market entry transaction rules, service supervision systems, and a reasonable distribution mechanism for land value-added income. The basic thinking for homestead system reform is: on the basis of safeguarding farmers' usufructuary rights to homesteads lawfully obtained, reform and improve the rural homestead system, explore new mechanisms for farmers' housing security, clearly define farmers' housing property rights, explore a paid use system for homesteads and a voluntary paid exit mechanism, and explore effective ways for mortgaging, guaranteeing, and transferring farmers' housing property rights.
Second, deepen reform of the rural land contractual management system. Promptly revise relevant laws, implement the central government's major decision to stabilize rural land contractual relationships and keep them unchanged for a long time, and, in due course, propose specific plans on methods for extending cultivated land contracts after the second-round contract expires and on new contract terms. On the basis of basically completing the confirmation, registration, and certification of rural collective land ownership, in accordance with the principle of unified registration of immovable property, accelerate the confirmation, registration, and certification of the right to use homesteads and collective construction land. Clarify and enhance the legal effect of the confirmation, registration, and certification of rural land contractual management rights, expand the scope of province-wide pilot promotion, and generally ensure that land is confirmed to households, while strictly controlling the scope of confirming rights and shares but not land. Issue guidance on pilot programs for mortgaging and guaranteeing rural contracted land management rights. Carry out pilots in places with conditions for the paid exit of farmers' land contractual management rights. Formulate and issue documents on improving the grassland contractual management system, standardize grassland contracting behavior and management methods, and fully mobilize the enthusiasm of the broad masses of herders to protect and build grasslands. Guide the orderly transfer of the right to use rural collectively owned barren hills, barren gullies, barren mounds, and barren beaches.
Third, improve the cultivated land protection and compensation system. Strictly implement overall land use planning, strengthen cultivated land protection, comprehensively carry out the designation of permanent basic farmland, and implement special protection. Improve the land reclamation system, revitalize existing land stock, establish an incentive and constraint mechanism for land reclamation, and implement the responsibility for reclaiming cultivated land damaged by production and construction. Increase efforts to transform low- and medium-yield fields, with the goal of increasing high-yield and stable-yield basic farmland and improving agricultural production conditions and the ecological environment, and improve measures for rural land consolidation. Strengthen standardized management of the cultivated land occupied-compensated balance according to law, strengthen the legal responsibility for the cultivated land occupied-compensated balance, improve the quality evaluation system for supplementary cultivated land in the occupied-compensated balance, and ensure that the quantity and quality of supplementary cultivated land are in place. Improve the compensation mechanism for the protection of cultivated land and basic farmland. Take more effective measures to strengthen supervision of the cultivated land occupied-compensated balance, resolutely prevent the phenomena of occupying more and compensating less, occupying superior land and compensating with inferior land, and occupying paddy fields and compensating with dry land, and eliminate illegal occupation of forest land and wetlands to compensate for cultivated land. Further implement the system of auditing government leading cadres upon departure for cultivated land protection. In accordance with relevant laws and regulations, improve and expand pilots such as the linkage between urban and rural construction land increases and decreases and “land tickets,” and promote the use of the policy linking increases and decreases in urban and rural construction land to support relocation for poverty alleviation.
2. Advance by category the confirmation of rural collective assets to households and reform of the shareholding cooperative system. On the basis of confirming the membership status of rural collective economic organizations and comprehensively verifying rural collective assets, for resource assets such as land, the focus is on promptly and solidly carrying out the confirmation, registration, and certification of land contractual management rights; for non-operating assets, the focus is on exploring effective mechanisms for unified collective operation and management conducive to improving public service capacity; for operating assets, the focus is on converting assets into shares and quantifying them to members of the collective economic organization, granting farmers more powers over collective assets, and developing various forms of shareholding cooperation. Improve the management, supervision, and income distribution systems for rural collective “three assets.” Clarify the market subject status of collective economic organizations. Establish rural property rights transfer and trading markets that meet actual needs, and ensure lawful, voluntary, open, fair, and orderly transactions of rural property rights. At the current stage, reform of the rural collective property rights system is strictly limited to within the collective economic organization, and effectively prevents a small number of people within the collective economic organization from encroaching on and controlling collective assets, and prevents external capital from swallowing and controlling collective assets.
3. Deepen forestry and water conservancy reform. Implement the strictest system of forest land use control. Focusing on liberalizing management rights, implementing disposal rights, and safeguarding income rights, deepen supporting reforms and improve the collective forest rights system. Implement classified forest management, improve timber harvesting rights, manage public welfare forests well, liberalize commercial forests, and mobilize the enthusiasm of forest farmers and social forces to develop forestry. Steadily advance reform of state-owned forest farms and state-owned forest areas. Study and propose guiding opinions on strengthening the protection of natural forest resources, and orderly stop commercial logging of natural forests. Carry out reform of the management system for small water conservancy projects, clarify project ownership and use rights, implement management and protection entities, and promote the sound operation of water conservancy projects.
(2) Accelerate the construction of a new agricultural management system
Developing various forms of appropriately scaled agricultural operations is the only way to agricultural modernization. With the core of improving land output rate, resource utilization rate, and labor productivity, we must accelerate the cultivation of new agricultural management entities such as family farms, specialized large households, farmers' cooperatives, and leading enterprises in agricultural industrialization, and build a three-dimensional and composite modern agricultural management system that suits national conditions and the stage of development, is based on farmer household management, takes cooperation and alliance as the bond, and is supported by socialized services, and raise the level of intensification, scale, organization, socialization, and industrialization of agricultural operations.
4. Promote standardized and orderly transfer of land management rights. On the basis of implementing the “separation of three rights” of ownership, contract rights, and management rights in rural cultivated land, in accordance with the principles of lawfulness, voluntariness, and compensation, guide farmers to transfer contracted land management rights in various ways, and develop various forms of appropriately scaled operations through methods such as shareholding in land management rights and trusteeship. Grasp the degree of land management rights transfer, concentration, and scaled operation, do not one-sidedly pursue excessively large-scale operations, do not launch great leaps forward, do not use coercive orders, and do not issue arbitrary administrative directives, so that appropriately scaled operations are compatible with the transfer of rural labor, advances in agricultural science and technology, and the level of agricultural socialized services. Improve the capacity and level of farmer household management, focus on developing appropriately scaled farmer family farms that use family members as the main labor force, rely mainly on agriculture for income, and engage in specialized and intensive agricultural production, making them a vital force for developing modern agriculture. Propose relevant legislative suggestions for promoting the development of family farms in due course.
5. Strengthen the standardized construction of farmers' cooperatives. Strengthen the standardized construction of specialized farmers' cooperatives and land shareholding cooperatives, and deeply advance the action to build demonstration cooperatives. Encourage farmers' cooperatives to develop agricultural product processing businesses, innovate organizational forms and interest linkage mechanisms in the agricultural industry chain, build mutually beneficial and win-win cooperation models among farmer households, cooperatives, and enterprises, and let farmers share more of the value-added income of the industry chain. Further innovate mechanisms for fiscal support for the development of farmers' cooperatives, and allow government projects to be invested directly in eligible cooperatives. Improve policies for farmers to use contracted land management rights as shares to develop agricultural industrialized operations.
6. Innovate agricultural socialized service mechanisms. Household management will remain the basic force in agricultural production for a considerable period, and through thoughtful and convenient socialized services, farmer household operations must be brought onto the track of modern agricultural development. Fully give play to the role of public-benefit agricultural service institutions, vigorously cultivate various forms of agricultural operating service organizations, and improve a socialized service system that covers the whole process, is comprehensively supported, and is convenient and efficient. Carry out pilot innovations in mechanisms for the government to purchase public-benefit services from agricultural operating service organizations.
7. Cultivate a professional farmer workforce. Formulate special plans and feasible policies, attract young people to engage in farming, cultivate new-type professional farmers, and build a high-quality workforce of new-type agricultural production and operation operators. Support migrant workers with skills and management ability to return to their hometowns to establish family farms, lead farmers' cooperatives, and create agricultural product processing and marketing enterprises and agricultural socialized service organizations.
8. Improve the supervision and risk prevention mechanisms for industrial and commercial capital leasing agricultural land. Make clear provisions on industrial and commercial capital leasing farmers' contracted land, establish strict qualification review, project supervision, and regular inspection mechanisms, prohibit enclosing land under the name of agriculture for non-agricultural construction, and prevent the spread of the “non-grainization” phenomenon. Encourage and support industrial and commercial enterprises to develop modern planting and breeding industries suitable for enterprise-based operations, agricultural product processing and circulation, and agricultural socialized services, and introduce modern production factors and business models into agriculture. Explore the establishment of a risk guarantee fund system for industrial and commercial capital leasing agricultural land.
9. Advance the reform and development of agricultural reclamation and comprehensively deepen the comprehensive reform of supply and marketing cooperatives. Study and issue policies and measures to advance the reform and development of agricultural reclamation, deepen reform of the group-based operation of reclamation areas and the enterprise-based operation of farms, innovate the industry guidance and management system, the enterprise market-oriented operation system, and the farm operation and management system, clarify the ownership relationships of state-owned assets in agricultural reclamation, establish a state-owned asset supervision system suited to the characteristics of agricultural reclamation, and further advance reform of the social functions undertaken by agricultural reclamation. In accordance with the purpose of serving agriculture and the direction of separating government from undertakings and separating the cooperative from enterprises, advance system reform and mechanism innovation according to local conditions, and build supply and marketing cooperatives into a cooperative economic organization system that is more closely connected with farmers' interests, has more complete agricultural service functions, and operates more efficiently in the market, making them a vital force and comprehensive platform for serving farmers' production and life.