How can idle rural homestead land among the rural "three plots of land" turn farmers' property rights into actual property?
Accelerate the confirmation, registration and issuance of certificates for rural land contractual management rights, and actively strive for pilot projects for market entry of collective operational construction land. Deepen the reform of the collective forest rights system. Promote the expansion of the reform of the property rights system of collective economic organizations to the township level, improve the rural property rights transfer and trading market, and strengthen supervision of collective assets. ——2015 Municipal Government Work Report
Idle Homestead Land Stands Out Most Among the Rural "Three Plots of Land"
⟦NL> The Third Plenary Session of the 18th CPC Central Committee proposed granting farmers more property rights. What exactly are farmers' property rights? At this year's Beijing Two Sessions government affairs inquiry meeting, a reporter interviewed Kang Sen, deputy secretary of the Municipal Party Committee's Rural Work Committee. Kang Sen said that farmers' property rights are a very broad concept, including some shared property rights, such as homestead land, contracted land, collective assets quantified to households, and collective property rights confirmed to households; they also include some unique property rights, such as forest rights for farmers in mountainous areas and shares for cooperative members.
Among the many property rights, Guo Guanglei, a municipal people's congress representative and director of the Municipal Rural Research Center, believes that land rights are the core of farmers' property rights. "Specifically, this refers to the rural 'three plots of land': village collective construction land, farmers' contracted land, and homestead land," Guo Guanglei explained.
Among the "three plots of land," homestead land is what farmers care about most. Especially with the development of new urbanization, idle rural homestead land is increasing day by day. This piece of property that "cannot be taken away" has become a source of anxiety for many farmers who work in cities: "You can't take it with you when you go to the city, and it can't be traded on the market, so the homestead land can only sit idle."
According to a sample survey by the Municipal Rural Research Center, at present, in the suburban rural areas of this city, the proportion of villages with idle rural houses is as high as 81.3%, and idle homestead land accounts for 5.3% of the total homestead land area. Among the six districts and counties sampled - Changping, Mentougou, Huairou, Miyun, Pinggu, and Fangshan - Fangshan District, Changping District, and Huairou District had relatively large proportions of idle homestead land, at 31.9%, 13.5%, and 10.1% respectively.
The sample survey results show that the main reasons for idle rural houses in this city are farmers working away from home year-round, purchasing other homes resulting in one household having multiple homes, and relocation from hazardous villages. Especially in some near-suburban areas, after farmers buy apartments, their original rural homes are left idle and unoccupied most of the time.
Increasing farmers' property income and making innovative explorations on idle rural houses to turn idle rural house assets into cash is currently a common expectation among farmers. "In response to the problem of idle homestead land, the central government is studying reform policies, and various localities are also carrying out some pilot attempts," Guo Guanglei said. According to the rural homestead reform plan recently issued by the central government, a paid exit mechanism for homestead land will be explored within rural collective membership. In this regard, Guo Guanglei explained that to carry out such exploration, the first step is to confirm and issue certificates for rural homestead land use rights, and then, on the basis of fully respecting farmers' relevant rights and interests in homestead land, explore a paid exit mechanism for homestead land within village collective membership.
In addition, Guo Guanglei also put forward suggestions on the use of idle rural houses. "Idle rural houses can be used to develop industries that conform to urban functional planning." Guo Guanglei gave an example: "For example, Tianxianyu Village in Bohai Town, Huairou District, is trying to use idle rural houses to develop the leisure and elderly care industry."
Giving Idle Rural Houses Market Power
In recent years, as large numbers of farmers in Beijing's suburbs have relocated to apartments or gone to cities for employment and education, buying homes and settling down, more and more idle rural houses have appeared in Beijing's suburban countryside. This phenomenon also attracted special attention from Yue Hongsheng, a municipal CPPCC member and standing committee member of the Municipal Federation of Returned Overseas Chinese.
"On one side, there is a shortage of elderly care institutions; on the other side, there is idle rural homestead land. Why can't the two develop together?" Yue Hongsheng took out a document and introduced that according to predictions, the number of elderly people with household registration in this city will reach 3.8 million by 2020, accounting for 25% of the city's total registered population; by 2030 it will reach 4.8 million, accounting for 30%; and by 2040 it will reach 5.6 million, accounting for 35%. These data fully demonstrate that the aging of Beijing's urban population is already extremely severe, and it is imperative to comprehensively improve service levels for the elderly, increase the basic supply of social services, and rapidly expand the scale of Beijing's elderly care industry.
Yue Hongsheng analyzed that homestead land and structures on it are important property for farmers, and revitalizing them and giving them market power to increase farmers' property income is a task that rural grassroots managers need to solve.
Yue Hongsheng suggested that these idle rural house resources could be planned and utilized in a unified way, renovated and built according to unified livability and care standards. This could not only solve the land problem for the elderly care industry without occupying any farmland at all, but also greatly reduce development and construction costs. Rural homestead land used to build elderly care properties could adopt a cooperative operating model of trusteeship by professional institutions, controlling stakes by investing enterprises, and renting (or shareholding in) idle homestead land of local towns and villages, drawing social capital toward priority options and establishing a new elderly care model to meet market demand. This could both increase farmers' income from idle homestead land and create more employment opportunities for surplus rural labor, promote coordinated urban-rural integrated development, and create market conditions for the urbanization of Beijing's suburban countryside, benefiting the country and the people with multiple gains at once.
"The municipal and district/county governments can organize leaders of relevant bureaus, commissions, and offices and experts to hold demonstration meetings, listen to project reports and market analyses, and then select pilot districts and counties, and carry out pilot project construction through pilot planning and construction plans and supporting policies." Yue Hongsheng said that at the same time, it is also necessary to summarize pilot experience in a timely manner, adjust technical links and policy arrangements, and on the basis of successful pilot experience, formulate unified promotion and development plans for full-scale rollout.
Farmers Hold Property Rights and Look Forward to Cashing Them In
The reporter learned from investigations in suburban rural areas that many villages are currently using the "new three rises" approach - land circulation, asset operation, and farmer organization - to truly turn the property rights in farmers' hands into cash.
"Our elderly couple earns more than 30,000 yuan a year just from land transfer income." The speaker, Zhao Fushun, is a villager in Qianfu Village, Yujiawu Township, Tongzhou District. In Yujiawu Township, there are many villagers like Zhao Fushun who have lived prosperous lives relying on land transfer. At present, 23 villages in Yujiawu Township have completed land transfer of 35,000 mu, accounting for 64% of the land with confirmed rights; the transferred land has been used to introduce many high-end enterprises and build an international seed industry park.
"The most important property rights for farmers, as I understand them, are actually the 'three plots of land': agricultural contracted land, homestead land, and rural collective construction land. We villagers all have a share in these 'three plots of land.'" 30-year-old Wang Jian is an ordinary farmer in Caiyu Town, Daxing District. This young man born in the 1980s has even greater expectations for granting farmers more property rights.
"Now land transfer in many villages across the city is being done quite well, liberating farmers from the land and increasing their income through transfer fees. But what I care about more is whether homestead land can be transferred reasonably and legally just like urban land. How can it bring me more wealth?" Wang Jian said that many people in rural areas have now bought homes in the city, and a large number of rural houses are left idle. Even if rented out, they cannot fetch a high price; some only bring in tens of thousands of yuan after five or six years of renting, several times less than in the city. But at present, many detailed rules on market entry of rural homestead land have not yet been issued, so many farmers still feel very confused about how much wealth the "property rights" in their hands can actually bring them.
In fact, farmers' property rights are not limited to these. Many rural areas in Beijing's suburbs are allowing farmers to obtain more tangible benefits through reform of the collective economic property rights system. Doudian Village in Doudian Town, Fangshan District, for example, has made villagers' wallets fatter through quantified equity in collective assets. Doudian Village has always been a banner of this city's collective economic development. In recent years, Doudian Village has operated collective assets and resources through every possible means. On one hand, it has made equity investments in promising enterprises; on the other hand, it has invested in infrastructure construction, forming four major sectors: large-scale agriculture, automobiles, biomedicine, and emerging industry. In 2013, the automobile sector alone exceeded 1 billion yuan in revenue. On the equity certificates of Doudian Village villagers, each villager's shares are clearly marked in 4 parts, including basic shares (land shares), household registration shares, labor contribution shares, and management option shares. Unlike many villages where land rights confirmation is fixed, Doudian Village implements dynamic management of land rights confirmation, that is, reducing land when people leave and increasing land when people are added, in order to maintain the sustainability of collective economic development.
However, not every villager with quantified equity can receive the same benefits. The reporter's investigation found that in Beijing's suburban countryside, village collective asset management and operation vary greatly. In some villages, the year-end per capita dividend can reach tens of thousands of yuan; but in some remote mountainous villages, the annual per capita dividend is only a few yuan. According to statistics, from 2010 to 2013, the return rates on rural collective assets in this city were 2%, 1.5%, 1.4%, and 1.5% respectively, all lower than the bank deposit interest rate over the same period. Exactly how to grant farmers more property rights and enable them to achieve real "cashing in" is a problem that relevant departments need to work hard to solve.