Before Confirming Land Transfer Rights, the Distribution System Should Be Readjusted
For the 12th consecutive year, the Central Document No. 1 has once again focused on the “three rural issues” (agriculture, rural areas, and farmers). The Central Committee of the Communist Party of China and the State Council recently issued the "Several Opinions on Intensifying Reform and Innovation to Accelerate Agricultural Modernization," organized around five parts: modern agriculture, increasing farmers' incomes, new rural construction, rural reform, and rural rule of law. It explicitly states that for resource assets such as land, the focus should be on earnestly carrying out the registration and certification of land contractual management rights, expanding the scope of province-wide pilot programs, and generally ensuring that land is confirmed to households, while strictly controlling the scope of confirming rights and shares without confirming land.
As pilot work on rural collective property rights system reform and rural land system reform, which has long attracted market attention, intensifying reform and innovation and accelerating agricultural modernization have undoubtedly become the top priorities of rural work. How can we ensure, in the course of reform, that the public ownership nature of land remains unchanged, that the red line for arable land is not breached, and that farmers' interests are not harmed? In light of actual conditions at the grassroots level, Ha Mingjiang, a deputy to the National People's Congress and party secretary of Zhongjie Village, Huaizhen Town, Xianxian County, Hebei Province, recently said frankly in an interview with a reporter from Legal Daily that before rural land rights are confirmed and transferred, the existing land contracting system should first be adjusted, land should be redistributed, and only on that basis should rights confirmation work be carried out, so that the broad masses of farmers can truly share in fair and reasonable reform dividends.
“What farmers care about most is still the land issue; this is the root of farmers. The main problem existing in rural areas now is the land issue, and the conflicts triggered by the land issue will bring unstable factors to society and great discord to some families. This is a huge hidden danger, especially because it will affect the deepening of rural land reform in the next step.” Ha Mingjiang told reporters that the current rural land contracting and distribution system has been implemented for more than 30 years, and for so many years, the vast majority of villages have not made adjustments. People who have not been allocated land now already account for 45% of the total agricultural population, and there has basically been no change, but changes in the rural population have been considerable. “Take my village as an example. Since land was allocated in 1982, it has continued to this day. Young people under 32 in the village did not catch the land allocation when they were born, so now they have no land in hand. Now these children have also grown up, married, and had children, but their children still have no land to be allocated.” Ha Mingjiang said.
Ha Mingjiang counted on his fingers and began calculating for the reporter. For example, a husband and wife who were allocated land at the time generally had two sons on average after marriage, then took two daughters-in-law, and then had two children on average each, making 10 people in total, but among these 10 people, only the grandfather and grandmother had land. In this way, influenced by some old customs and for personal reasons, unequal distribution can easily trigger conflicts among family members. At the same time, when land was allocated that year, some farmers had many people in their families, especially many daughters. At the time, they were also allocated land according to policy. Later, because they married far away or for other reasons, they are no longer in the village now, which has led to the situation that no one farms the land, but after unified transfer, these people will certainly still enjoy many rights and interests. This will also create unfair situations.
“When the economic situation was still fairly good a few years ago, these landless farmers could still earn a decent income by going out to work. But now the economic situation is not very good, finding work is becoming harder and harder, and many people have returned to the village again. Their desire for land is also growing stronger and stronger. But there is no land, so what can be done? Now in many places there have appeared conflicts in which sons and daughters in a family all fight over the little bit of land the elderly have. This situation is very serious.” Ha Mingjiang, as a deputy to the people's congress, was full of anxiety.
People without land want to farm but have none, while people with land do not have the ability to farm it. Many farmers keep going to village officials to report the problem, and the conflicts are becoming increasingly intense, but village officials are also helpless. “If things continue to develop this way, in another 20 years, nearly 80% of our country's agricultural population will have no land to farm. In other words, the land will be held in the hands of 20% elderly people, who can neither farm it nor distribute it, and this will bring great conflicts to their families. Therefore, before I came to this meeting, several village party secretaries repeatedly urged me that when I got to Beijing, I must raise this issue.” Ha Mingjiang said.
In fact, Ha Mingjiang has been continuously putting forward suggestions on the land contracting issue. “But I am not satisfied with the Ministry of Agriculture's reply.” Ha Mingjiang told reporters that in the reply given to him at the time, the relevant department of the Ministry of Agriculture proposed several solutions to this problem: for those without land, first use reserved land to supplement them; if there is no reserved land to allocate, then solve the employment problem of these people through means such as setting up enterprises; if employment also cannot be solved, then provide relief by having them receive the minimum living allowance.
“But the problem is that in reality some villages simply do not have reserved land, and setting up their own enterprises to solve employment is also beyond the capacity of some villages. As for receiving the minimum living allowance, that is even more unrealistic. Because young people with no land to farm simply do not meet the Ministry of Civil Affairs' requirements for receiving the minimum living allowance. In particular, in 2013 there was also a concentrated cleanup of the minimum living allowance system, and the conditions became even stricter: one must meet the conditions to enjoy it. Letting 40% of people without land receive the minimum living allowance is obviously impossible.” Ha Mingjiang said.
There is a reason why Ha Mingjiang is so anxious about this issue now. “Now land rights confirmation work is about to be rolled out comprehensively, and rural reform has entered another deeper stage. Rights confirmation is not the same as distribution. Whether it is large-scale land transfer or collective farming, rights confirmation is a good thing. But there are also some problems. As the saying goes, a hundred people have a hundred tastes; some villagers' ideas are not consistent with others'. They simply do not want to participate in land transfer. Such signs have already appeared in practice. Some villagers who hold land clearly say they do not want to participate in transfer, even if the land just sits there unused. Confirming rights for this kind of land simply cannot play the safeguarding and promoting role it should for land transfer.”
Regarding land rights confirmation and land transfer, last year Ha Mingjiang participated in research activities in the capacity of a deputy to the National People's Congress and visited several pilot villages at the national, provincial, and municipal levels. “Because rights confirmation will affect survival and development for a very long period in the future, everyone attaches great importance to it. It can be said that the state's investment in this work is now quite large. The cost of confirming rights for one mu of land is as high as more than 130 yuan in some cases and more than 80 yuan in lower cases. Therefore, this investment must not be left without seeing actual results. The rights confirmation work must be done well and truly lay a good foundation for land transfer. But before rights confirmation, if land is not redistributed, then the rights and interests of landless farmers in rural areas now cannot be safeguarded, their survival will become a problem, and this will in turn affect the stability and development of the entire society. We now have more than 800 million farmers. If the current land distribution policy is not adjusted, then in another 20 years, 80% of farmers will have no land.” Ha Mingjiang said.
In order to resolve this currently prominent contradiction, Ha Mingjiang suggested that according to the existing lawful population in rural areas, that is, the lawful population conforming to the state's family planning policy, excluding those born in violation of the policy, all may participate anew in land distribution, and beyond that no one enjoys this qualification. On this basis, land should be distributed equally according to the number of people.