How can the land inspection system maximize its social value?
Establishing the national land inspection system is a major measure of the Party Central Committee and the State Council for implementing the Scientific Outlook on Development and promoting sustainable economic and social development; it is an important part of strengthening land supervision and establishing the strictest farmland protection system; and it is an important experiment in exploring solutions to the central-local relationship and advancing the reform of the administrative management system. Since the national land inspection system was implemented in 2006, it has been explored while working and summarized while researching, resulting in a deeper and clearer understanding of the social value, functions, purpose and significance, work content and priorities of the national land inspection system, which has been confirmed in work practice.
The dual land system gave rise to the national land inspection system
The Constitution stipulates that China implements a public land ownership system under which urban land is owned by the state and rural land is owned collectively, with the dual land system as its basic feature, specifically manifested as the government's dual identity and the dual subjects of land property rights. The superposition of the two forms one land supply subject (the government) and one type of traded property right (the imperfectly competitive market for state-owned land, that is, a government monopoly market). This kind of monopoly has both administrative characteristics and market characteristics; it possesses both the universality of monopoly and the particularity of a transitional economy. Owing to its administrative characteristics, the government promotes the transformation of land resources into land capital, administrative power dominates property rights, administrative rules dominate market rules, and administrative interests dominate economic interests, which leads to administrative power failing to perform public functions, market rules failing to protect market competition, and price signals failing to reflect supply and demand relationships.
The dual land system inevitably produces contradictions in reality between the government and the market, the state and society, and the central and local levels, among which the coordination of the central-local relationship is particularly important. When the government monopolizes the market and the land market has obvious administrative characteristics, the central-local relationship is highly prone to contradictions in two aspects: contradictions in the government's governing philosophy and contradictions in the path of state regulation. The land market essentially becomes a process of interest-based gaming among interest subjects such as the central government, local governments, rural collectives, enterprises, farmers, and urban residents. While the central government emphasizes long-term, overall economic development, it pays even more attention to social values such as “fairness, justice, stability, and harmony,” whereas local governments mainly value economic value and the political value related to individual promotion, and other subjects value economic interests even more. This easily causes government failure and market failure in land management. Based on the difficult-to-reconcile contradictions between the central and local governments caused by the dual land system, the central government decided to establish the national land inspection system, which provides the possibility of resolving these two “failures.”
To maximize its social value, land inspection must not only create more social value at a lower cost from the perspective of the subject realizing its own value, but must also create as much use value as possible so that the beneficiaries can obtain greater returns from it. This is precisely the starting point and the ultimate goal of maximizing the social value of land inspection.
The national land inspection system has significant social value
The social value of land inspection in China can be divided into economic value, political value, ecological value, ethical value and institutional value.
First, the implementation of the land inspection system has effectively curbed the massive loss of land assets caused by local governments' illegal and non-compliant land management and use, and its economic value cannot be underestimated. Second, implementing the national land inspection system and strictly guarding the red line of 1.8 billion mu of farmland concerns social stability and the long-term peace and order of the country, and has important political value. Third, strengthening land inspection, on the basis of holding the farmland red line, strictly controls the conversion of non-construction land to construction land and the conversion of agricultural land to industrial land, and has important ecological value for correctly handling the relationship between humans and nature and ensuring sustainable economic and social development. Finally, the national-interest orientation of land inspection requires it to safeguard the interests of the later-wealthy strata, the interests of later-developing regions, and the interests of future generations, so land inspection has important ethical value. In addition, from the perspective of the reform and innovation of China's administrative management system, the establishment of the national land inspection system is an organic component of it, and plays a pioneering and demonstrative role in advancing the reform of the administrative management system and solving the difficult problem of the central-local relationship.
In summary, carrying out land inspection work in accordance with the law and regulating and constraining local governments' power over land management and use helps safeguard the authority of the central government and the dignity of national laws, regulations and policies, protect farmland and especially basic farmland, protect and improve the land ecological environment, maintain the socialist public ownership of land, prevent the loss of state and collective land assets, safeguard and protect the lawful interests of farmers who have lost their land, maintain social harmony and stability, enhance the government's executive capacity and credibility, and comprehensively advance the building of a responsible government, a law-based government and a service-oriented government.