Pilot Reform of Rural Collective Asset Property Rights About to Be Launched

According to a report by China National Radio's "News and Newspaper Summary," the central government recently reviewed and approved a pilot reform plan for developing farmers' share cooperatives and granting farmers share rights in collective assets, marking the full launch of pilot work on rural collective asset property rights across the country.

Vice Minister of Agriculture Chen Xiaohua said that an important goal of the pilot is to explore an effective form of collective ownership, which, when applied to each individual farmer, can be summarized as a further clarification of rights.

Chen Xiaohua: Grant farmers more property rights, clarify property rights, improve the bundle of rights, activate the potential of factors of production, and establish a new operating mechanism for the collective economy that meets the conditions of a market economy. Granting farmers the bundle of rights associated with shares in collective assets mainly refers to six rights associated with shares in operating assets. These six rights should be implemented in categories according to actual conditions: actively carry out pilots for the right to possess shares and the right to income from shares; carry out pilots for the right to paid exit and the right to inheritance where conditions permit; and cautiously carry out pilots for the right to mortgage shares and the right to use shares as collateral. In order to effectively protect farmers' interests, at the current stage the transfer of collective shares should be strictly limited to within the scope of the collective organization itself.

It is understood that the reform pilot will take into account the different regions of the east, central and western areas. Chen Xiaohua stressed that different regions and different types of assets should have different exploration priorities.

Chen Xiaohua: For resource-based assets such as collective land, the focus is on exploring and developing various forms such as land share cooperation on the basis of adhering to household contracting and respecting farmers' wishes; for operating assets such as collective property, the focus is on quantifying the assets to members of the collective economic organization and, on that basis, developing farmers' share cooperation; for non-operating assets used for public welfare services, the focus is on exploring an effective mechanism for unified collective operation and maintenance.

Chen Xiaohua reiterated that in the process of advancing the reform pilot, farmers' rights must first be safeguarded. Long-standing legacy issues such as the vague definition of members of collective economic organizations will be gradually resolved during the pilot process.