How Land Development Can Make Farmers the Beneficiaries
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 Reforming the Rural Land Expropriation, Market Entry of Collective Operational Construction Land, and the Homestead System." The core goal of the reform is the market entry of agricultural land, including: exploring and improving a land expropriation system with standardized procedures, reasonable compensation and diverse safeguards; a market entry system for rural collective operational construction land featuring equal rights and equal prices, smooth circulation and shared returns; and a homestead system based on lawful and fair acquisition, economical and intensive use, and voluntary and compensated exit.
The issuance of the "Opinions" marks that China's rural land system reform is about to enter the pilot stage. Rural land expropriation and market entry, proposed against the backdrop of the market deciding resource allocation and new-type urbanization, means that reforming the agricultural land circulation system now has the conditions in place and has become an irreversible general trend.
The core of the reform is, in fact, to let the vast number of people who depend on agricultural land obtain real benefits in the process of land expropriation and circulation. Agricultural land is no longer cheap, no longer a “reserve” for urban land, and urban expansion, land development and so on can no longer easily capture the “scissors gap” from agricultural land. To put it bluntly, farmers are no longer the objects of deprivation.
It has almost become a customary impression that whenever agricultural land expropriation and development are involved, certain conflicts and clashes always accompany them. News of forced demolitions and petitions mostly plays out on agricultural land. This is certainly in part a problem of the compensation system, and legally there is also a need to strengthen standards and safeguards, but at root, a piece of land without a “market price” and a group of farmers without market bargaining power are destined to be unable to obtain fundamental protection. Even “compensation” is an unpleasant term, implying that farmers vacating land is merely a contribution, while in the process of land development, use and appreciation, and by extension in the process of development itself, they are thrown outside the track. Agricultural land reform is meant to fundamentally change this phenomenon.
The Third Plenary Session of the 18th Central Committee clearly stated that carrying out the three reforms of rural land expropriation, market entry of collective operational construction land, and the homestead system is an important task. We can see that the content of this pilot work has already unfolded efforts in these three directions, with the goal clearly pointing to establishing a unified urban-rural construction land market and allowing farmers to share in the land value-added returns of the urbanization process. This is undoubtedly of great significance for reducing urban-rural inequality and achieving win-win development among the government and farmers, and between rural and urban areas, and it deserves recognition.
It must be made clear that the foundation of the rural land system is to clarify and protect farmers' rights and interests. Fundamentally speaking, whether land is circulated, whether it is expropriated, at what price, and for how long should be decided by farmers themselves. If, because of the requirements of urbanization, farmers give up land they originally used themselves, then they must become the beneficiaries of this process, and they should also obtain in this process enough initial capital to become new urban residents. Only this is a healthy model of urbanization, and only in this way can the fairness and legitimacy of the reform be demonstrated.
The issue of rural land system reform has been raised for a long time, but it has long failed to achieve a breakthrough. The core reason lies in the vague definition of land property rights. Under current policy, the “collective” is the subject of rural land ownership, but use rights have always been unclear, and the relationship between use rights and property rights lacks explanation. When some local governments engage in land development, they thereby lose limits and constraints on power, leading to phenomena that harm farmers' interests, such as arbitrary land circulation, undervaluation of land, and excessively low compensation standards.
Reform of the rural land system cannot be accomplished overnight. The complexity behind why it has been proposed for many years yet is difficult to break through requires serious study and attention. But clearly defining the rights of subjects and regulating the behavior of subjects is the foundation and the prerequisite. Respecting farmers' individual demands, protecting farmers' land rights, and promoting and demonstrating urban-rural fairness are the original aspirations that should not be violated. The core purpose of the reform must not be forgotten for even a moment.