Four Major Challenges Facing the Pilot Program for Homestead Transfer
As more farmers leave their villages to work in cities, more and more homesteads and homes are left vacant, causing enormous waste of resources. Moreover, since homesteads and homes cannot be transferred, migrant workers who have moved to cities lose this transferable asset and cannot cash it in to buy the housing they urgently need in the city. In January 2015, the General Office of the CPC Central Committee and the General Office of the State Council jointly issued the "Opinions on the Pilot Work of Rural Land Expropriation, Market Entry of Collective Operational Construction Land, and Reform of the Homestead System." On February 25, the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress deliberated the "Decision (Draft) on Authorizing the State Council to Temporarily Adjust Relevant Legal Provisions in the Administrative Areas of 33 Pilot Counties (Cities, Districts) Including Daxing District of Beijing," which proposed to authorize the State Council to temporarily adjust the implementation of the relevant provisions of the "Land Administration Law" and the "Urban Real Estate Administration Law" concerning rural land expropriation, market entry of collective operational construction land, and the homestead management system in the administrative areas of 33 pilot counties (cities, districts). This marked the point at which the pilot reform of the rural "three types of land," including homestead transfer reform, finally entered a substantive stage.
Local practice has already moved ahead of theory and policy. According to the results of Shao Ting's field research, regions such as Zhejiang, Jiangsu, and Anhui implemented the practice of cross-village homestead transfer many years ago. However, because these practices conflicted with land administration laws, none of these regions issued explicit local regulations. The results of a 2013 survey of 1,010 questionnaires from farming households in six provinces (municipalities) by Zhu Mingfen and Deng Rong showed that among the buyers of farmers' homes, 48.3% were villagers from the same village; 51.7% were non-village residents (including villagers from other villages, urban residents, and corporate entities), of which 43.1% were sold to urban residents and 6.9% to corporate entities. The scale and scope of cross-village homestead transfer have already exceeded what the law permits, giving homesteads and farmers' housing, which were originally only welfare-oriented, a stronger commodity attribute. Moreover, no negative effects that scholars feared have been found in such transfers to date.
Therefore, the pilot homestead transfer should further emancipate the mind and make bold attempts, opening a new path for effectively solving the homestead problem.
To whom should homesteads be voluntarily transferred with compensation?
The pilot homestead exit program adheres to the principle of voluntary transfer with compensation, conforming to the general principles of a market economy and aligning with the overall direction of reform. The question is, to whom should homesteads be transferred with compensation? Some commentators believe they can be transferred to urban residents, increasing rural residents' property income by a large amount. Some urban residents are also very willing to buy a home in the countryside, so the whole family can go to the countryside for holidays and leisure.
The pilot homestead exit plan stipulates that homesteads can only be transferred to farming households in the same village community, giving priority to young people who have no homestead or who need to build houses to get married, such as those born in the "80s" and "90s."
In the long run, homesteads, which currently have only a welfare nature, should also be given a certain commodity attribute, forming a special transfer market with Chinese characteristics. The compensated transfer stipulated in the pilot plan at least gives homesteads a semi-commodity attribute and is also a negation of the purely welfare-oriented nature of the past. The transfer of homesteads within the scope of one township can be tested.
Determination of the price of compensated homestead transfer
For compensated homestead transfer, a very important issue is determining the transfer price. The government should trust that the transferring household and the receiving household can, based on the general market price trend and supply and demand conditions, negotiate a reasonable price acceptable to both parties. The pilot plan stipulates that only residents of the same village community are eligible to purchase transferred homesteads, which limits demand to a very small scope and thus determines that the homestead transfer price cannot be raised and certainly cannot be "speculated" on. The academic hope that migrant workers in cities could use the money from the compensated transfer of their hometown homesteads to buy homes in the towns where they work is bound to come to nothing.
⟦NL> Who should enjoy the income from homestead transfer?
Who is eligible to enjoy the income from homestead transfer? There are two different opinions: one is that it should be enjoyed by the village collective, and the other is that it should be enjoyed by the transferring household. The basis for the village collective enjoying it is that the ownership of the homestead belongs to the village collective. However, given that rural customs still need to change, village collective enjoyment often becomes village cadre enjoyment, thereby providing a new channel for village cadre corruption. To avoid this corruption problem, institutional design could consider the shareholding of collective assets, including the quantification of each collective member's share.
Farmers who exit their homesteads should enjoy welfare housing in the city
After farmers move to the city, some voluntarily exit their original rural homesteads. In that case, they should be able to buy a unit of welfare housing in the town where they work. This involves the issue of fiscal funds for welfare housing expenditure by the government of the town where migrant workers work. Since migrant workers already work in the town and have contributed to its construction, the government should assume the obligation of providing welfare housing, rather than, as in the past, freely enjoying the dividends of migrant workers' contributions, and even less should it, while freely enjoying the dividends of migrant workers' contributions, allow the housing problem of migrant workers to cause social instability.
If migrant workers who have moved to the city to work have bought welfare housing in the town where they work and also have a stable job, they should exit their original rural homestead. This is because they cannot occupy two welfare homes.
One view holds that China currently has 270 million migrant workers, and roughly 40 million to 50 million migrant workers have moved with their entire families, but knowing that they still have a courtyard home in their hometown to shelter them from wind and rain, their mindset while working in the city is more at ease. Under the impact of the 2008 international economic crisis, tens of millions of migrant workers returned to their hometowns, and this situation may occur in the future as well. Otherwise, once they lose their jobs, they may become urban poor, and slums like those in countries such as Brazil, India, and South Africa may appear. As China's reform advances, we look forward to the gradual improvement of the social security system, which will enable migrant workers to receive unemployment benefits, acquire new skills with the help of the government and society, and have welfare housing in the towns where they work, so that they no longer need to return to their rural hometowns.