What are the three red lines for rural land transfer in China? Zheng Fengtian explains

In recent years, rural land transfer in China has developed rapidly, but some problems have also emerged, including forced transfer and the one-sided pursuit of transfer scale and speed, which have infringed on farmers' lawful land rights and interests. Problems such as “non-grain production” and “non-agricultural use” caused by capital going to the countryside are also quite prominent. If these are tolerated, they will affect the orderly transfer of rural land in China and the healthy development of appropriately scaled operations. The Opinions on Guiding the Orderly Transfer of Rural Land Management Rights and Developing Appropriately Scaled Agricultural Operations, issued by the General Office of the CPC Central Committee and the General Office of the State Council, regulates the chaos in rural land transfer, designs top-level red lines, sets the tone of the “three things that must not be done”, and draws three red lines to guide the healthy transfer of rural land. These “three things that must not be done” are in fact three red lines. Only by following these red lines can rural land transfer truly promote the development of modern agriculture and increase farmers' incomes. These three red lines include:

The first red line is that farmers' land must not be transferred by force; farmers' contract rights must be protected, farmers' interests must be protected, and the right to transfer land belongs to farming households.Although the central government encourages innovative forms of farmland transfer, this does not mean that the grassroots can do whatever they want. Only what the central government permits may be done. For example, land fragmentation can be addressed through exchange, pilot programs for mortgaging and guaranteeing land management rights can be advanced, and farmers can use contracted management rights as shares to develop agricultural production. However, the right to transfer land belongs to farming households, and land contractual management rights belong to farmers. Whether land is transferred, how the price is determined, and what form is chosen should be decided independently by the contracting farming household, and the income from transfer should also belong to the contracting farming household. There must be no Great Leap Forward, no coercion, and no blind administrative direction. The dominant position of farmers in transfer must be respected. Village-level organizations may organize unified transfer only on the premise of written entrustment by farming households. It is prohibited, in the name of the minority obeying the majority, to concentrate the contracted land of all farming households in an entire village or group for external investment attraction and operation. The orderly and healthy transfer of land must be ensured by strengthening the construction of the land transfer service system.

The second red line is the red line drawn for capital going to the countryside, namely preventing problems such as “non-grain production” and “non-agricultural use”.It is meaningful for industrial and commercial enterprises to enter agriculture, but there are also quite a few problems. The advantage of capital going to the countryside is that it brings new business concepts and can bring new technologies, new varieties, and new business models, but excessive pursuit of profit easily intensifies the tendency toward “non-grain production” and “non-agricultural use”, and squeezes out farmers' employment space. In order to prevent the “non-agricultural use” triggered by capital going to the countryside, the Opinions set out the scope of business for capital that goes to the countryside, namely developing the breeding of improved varieties and seedlings, high-standard facility agriculture, scaled breeding, and developing rural “four wastelands” resources and other things that individual farming households cannot do, rather than replacing farmers in cultivation. Supervision and risk prevention for land transferred by industrial and commercial capital must also be strengthened. For long-term, large-area leasing of farmers' contracted land, there must be clear upper-limit control, a sound system of qualification review, project review, and risk guarantee funds must be established, market access thresholds must be strengthened along with strong post-event supervision, and regular supervision and inspection of capital leasing land must be carried out to investigate and correct illegal and non-compliant acts.

The third red line is that four “strictly prohibited” measures were proposed, adhering to the strictest farmland protection system and effectively protecting basic farmland.Rural land transfer must be both liberalized and constrained. In reality, the “non-agricultural use” of cultivated land occurs from time to time. In many places, rural land is occupied in the name of agricultural development and then used for non-agricultural development under various names. The Opinions propose using use control as the starting point and put forward four “strictly prohibited” measures: strictly prohibiting illegal non-agricultural construction under the name of land transfer. The four “strictly prohibited” measures include: strictly prohibiting illegal non-agricultural construction under the name of land transfer; strictly prohibiting the construction or disguised construction of tourist resorts, golf courses, villas, private clubs, and the like on transferred farmland; strictly prohibiting the occupation of basic farmland for pond digging, tree planting, and other acts that damage cultivation conditions; and strictly prohibiting the destruction, pollution, enclosure, and idling of cultivated land and the damage of farmland infrastructure. Acts of illegal and non-compliant non-agricultural construction through “rent instead of expropriation” must be resolutely investigated and handled, and unauthorized “non-agricultural use” of cultivated land must be resolutely prohibited.

In short, promoting rural land transfer is of great significance to the scaled operation of modern agriculture, but it must be premised on land use control. In the process of transfer, farmers' land rights and interests must be respected, and land use must not be changed, especially not to non-agricultural use. Only in this way can land transfer develop healthily.