Interpretation of Rural Land Use Control and Institutional Innovation
How to both coordinate urban and rural areas to ensure coordinated economic and social development, and protect rural land resources and farmers' land rights and interests, has risen to become the principal contradiction in the current rural land issue.
In the process of promoting urban-rural integration, some places, proceeding from urban interests and continuing the "urbanization" tendency, have continued to deprive the "three rural" issues through various deformed so-called "urban-rural integration measures," which not only fail to enable farmers to integrate into cities, but also plant hidden dangers of social conflict or are already evolving into intense social conflict. As a result, this has aroused deep concern in society and the media about the rural land issue.
Why has the "strictest farmland protection system" failed to curb the continued reduction of farmland? Why has the situation in some places where basic farmland is "moved up mountains and down to beaches" and cross-provincial balance of occupation and compensation not fundamentally changed?
Organizing data from the National Statistical Yearbook and the "China Land and Resources Bulletin" reveals that in the 29 years from 1978 to 2007, China's farmland area decreased by a net 12.7253 million hectares (194 million mu), an average annual decrease of 6.6897 million mu. Apart from factors such as disaster damage, ecological farmland conversion, and agricultural structural adjustment, construction occupation is the main factor. In 2008, national construction occupied 2.874 million mu of farmland, disaster damage destroyed 372,000 mu, ecological farmland conversion accounted for 114,000 mu, and agricultural structural adjustment reduced 374,000 mu, totaling 3.734 million mu of farmland reduced. During the same period, national land consolidation, reclamation and development supplemented 3.444 million mu of farmland, a net decrease of 290,000 mu. In recent years, the total supply of construction land has still shown a relatively rapid growth trend. In 2009, the national approved construction land was 576,000 hectares, an increase of 44.6% over the previous year; in 2010, the national actual land transfer area was 428,000 hectares, a year-on-year increase of 105%, and the total transaction price of land transfers reached as high as 2.7 trillion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 70.4%. This is the greatest danger of the continued reduction of farmland.
Coordinating urban and rural development and urban-rural integration were originally proposed to solve the "three rural" issues, but why do some places, instead of "promoting the allocation of resource factors to rural areas" and not actively exploring ways and methods of "industry supporting agriculture and cities supporting rural areas," turn "coordinating urban and rural development" into a pretext for unified allocation of urban and rural resources and taking whatever they want, leading to rural land continuing to flow in large quantities to cities and the construction land market? The market value of farmland cannot be estimated. Assuming that for each mu of farmland requisitioned, farmers' benefits are lost by an average of 50,000 yuan, how many trillion yuan in land assets has the state taken from farmers by monopolizing the primary land market, and when will industry supporting agriculture and cities supporting rural areas actually be realized?
Why does the rural population continue to decrease while the area of rural homestead land continues to increase? According to research by the Institute of Geographic Sciences and Natural Resources Research of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and the Land Management Center of the Ministry of Land and Resources, from 1996 to 2005, China's rural population decreased from 850.85 million to 745.44 million in 2005, a decrease of 105.41 million; during the same period, rural homestead land increased by 64,600 hectares.
Why are some places keen on promoting the replacement of farmers' land management contract rights, homestead land and housing with social security and urban housing (abbreviated as "three replacements"), using new methods and new means to enclosure farmers' land? Why do some places exploit loopholes in the "linkage between urban and rural construction land increase and decrease" (abbreviated as "dual linkage"), blurring land property rights and utilization boundaries, and evading land use control?
There are many such cases in rural reality, for example: mass incidents triggered by land requisition and demolition compensation in Suzhou High-tech Zone; the forced demolition incident in Yihuang, Jiangxi, etc. Chongqing's "land ticket" trading, that is, after rural construction land such as rural homestead land and its ancillary facility land, township enterprise land, and rural public facility and public welfare undertaking construction land is reclaimed as farmland, through the "dual linkage" system, using the surplus indicators for new urban construction land, in fact also creates conflicts with "land use control."
Why do the government's various actions of "doing practical things for the people," "increasing farmers' income," and "breaking the dual structure" always fail to win the genuine support of the common people as long as they involve land issues? For example, government-promoted land circulation, "three replacements," administrative village mergers, and renovation of old villages and urban villages. The reason is that many measures under the guise of "for farmers" are actually still for urban expansion, not for "three rural" development.
Whether in countries with public land ownership or private land ownership, resolving the contradiction between economic development needs and the protection of land resources and farmers' rights and interests mainly relies on the use control system rather than the land ownership system
Various signs indicate that in the new stage of coordinating urban and rural development, a new round of "land enclosure" has quietly revived again, and China's rural land management faces more severe challenges. The "Decision" of the Third Plenary Session of the Seventeenth Central Committee foresightedly emphasized the need to "improve the strict and standardized rural land management system."
First, the contradiction between economic development needs and land resource protection is the main reason for the emergence of the use control system. Even in countries with private land ownership, resolving this contradiction similarly requires establishing a strict land use control system. For example, "the United States, the United Kingdom and other countries possess the final decision power over land use rights, implementing control over land use through possession, control, management, and preemptive purchase rights to protect agricultural land" (Li Zhengui, 2008). The author visited the rural land system of the United States three times in 1998, 1999 and 2002, visiting the Land Policy and Planning Office of King County, Washington State, the County Agricultural Committee, and the Kirsop Farm in Olympia, Thurston County, among other places. Among these, the county government's purchase of "permanent agricultural land development rights" and the "land zoning law" in King County left an extremely deep impression. Over more than 30 years from the 1960s to the 1990s, King County reduced agricultural land by approximately 50,000 to 60,000 acres. In 1979, the county's voters approved by referendum to pay additional taxes, paying 50 million USD to purchase from farm owners the permanent development rights of 12,800 acres of land (called "preserved farmland"); in 1994, a land zoning law was also enacted. From then on, the trend of agricultural land reduction in King County was fundamentally controlled. It can be seen that achieving the goals of curbing land enclosure, protecting farmland, and economizing and intensively using land in China all require improving a strict and standardized land use control system.
Second, the current Chinese rural land system has played a major role in rural economic and social development, and even in the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation. It should continue to be improved on the basis of "long-term adherence," rather than being overturned and started over. Starting from the earliest prototype of the land contract system, "contracting output to households," rural land management system reform was pushed to the "tip of the wave." From 1982 to 1986, the first round of five "Central No. 1 Documents" in China's rural reform history were issued and implemented, and the framework of a new rural land system was gradually constructed. Subsequently, the reform of the rural contracted land management system has consistently followed the path of "clarifying ownership, stabilizing contract rights, invigorating use rights, safeguarding income rights, and respecting disposal rights." The promulgation and implementation of the "Rural Land Contract Law" marked the formal establishment of a new land system of "rural land collective ownership, household contract management, long-term stable contract rights, and encouragement of lawful circulation." This "is another good law that allows farmers to improve their economic status after the Land Reform Law of New China," and should be fully affirmed.
"Improving the strict and standardized rural land management system," with the focus on building a land use control system suited to China's national conditions
To promote urban-rural integration, it is first necessary to change development thinking and strategic priorities, and to implement the strategic thought of "industry supporting agriculture and cities supporting rural areas" into specific policy measures and institutional arrangements.
The requirements of coordinating urban and rural development for rural land management system innovation include two aspects: it is necessary to protect scarcer land resources, resolve sharper human-land contradictions, and safeguard farmers' land rights and interests that are more prone to loss; and it is also necessary for "rural land management" to actively respond to the trend of urban-rural integration. Therefore, specialized in-depth investigation and research are needed to actively explore a balanced land management system that both coordinates urban and rural development and protects rural land resources and farmers' land rights and interests.
The equilibrium point of the rural land management system can be found from the following four aspects: First, hold the bottom line: the red line of 1.8 billion mu of farmland. Second, broaden the horizon: control desertified land and expand agricultural land; for grain production of bulk agricultural products such as grain, cotton and oil, we must keep our eyes on 10 billion mu of agricultural land and not just 2 billion mu of farmland. Third, strip away authority: the government no longer directly operates land. Fourth, set an upper limit on returns: transform land finance into a land fund; reasonably distribute the land value-added returns of farmers' collectives, and increase the intensity of regulatory means such as taxation.
Revise and improve relevant laws and regulations. It cannot be denied that the reform of the rural contracted land management system still needs to be deepened. At present, research on the reform of the rural contracted land management system should start from two aspects: first, the improvement of the functions and powers of rural land contract management rights and the protection of rights and interests, and research on the rural land circulation market system, the appropriate scale management system, and the compensation system for farmers entering cities to withdraw from rural land contract management rights should be taken as key research areas to be broken through; second, key research should be conducted on the progress, practices, experience and problems of rural forest rights system reform, exploring the improvement of the functions and powers of rural collective forest land contract management rights and institutional safeguard issues. At the same time, it is also necessary to establish and improve the land use control system and the basic farmland protection system.
Strengthen research on new legislative needs. For example: the conditions, procedures, compensation standards for "three concentrations," "three replacements," and "dual linkage," and the methods for linking them with construction land indicators; in village renovation and household registration reform, the mechanism for the withdrawal of rural collective economic organization membership rights and entry into urban economic or community organizations; land interest issues in urban village renovation, etc.
The author investigated a town in Jiangnan, where urban construction requisitioned 400 mu of farmland from a village in the urban area (compensation in 2006 was 40,000 yuan/mu, currently 80,000 yuan/mu). After requisition, 10% (40 mu) was returned to the village collective as construction land (belonging to state-owned allocated land). In order to facilitate real estate transactions, the village collective then paid the transfer fee for this 40 mu of land at the local average urban land transfer price (1.5 million yuan/mu) (becoming state-owned transferred land), and then the village formulated a 6-phase resettlement housing construction plan. Currently, 4 phases with 396 units have been completed. The village villagers distribute housing according to the principle of one unit per household and one unit per mu of contracted land requisitioned, at a price based on construction cost (approximately 5,000 yuan/sq m). One farming household obtained 8 housing units. If sold at the local property price (approximately 20,000 yuan/sq m), each unit could appreciate by at least 1 million yuan. This case tells us about the new situations and new problems faced by institutional innovation, for example, the necessity, management methods and systems for retaining "collective land" in urban areas, and how to regulate the abnormal development of property income in urban villages, etc.