What Path Should China's Agricultural Transformation Take? An In-Depth Exploration of Development Paths
The core of the "three rural issues" is the issue of farmers, and the core of the issue of farmers is the issue of empowerment. Since the reform and opening up, Chinese farmers have gradually escaped the awkward situation of "power poverty," and various legitimate rights and interests have been protected one after another. To this day, the "right to choose a business model," which originally should not have been a problem, has become an urgent major issue and the foundation concerning the success or failure of agriculture.
A Lesson from the Past: Following the Soviet Example of Collective Farms, the Painful Historical Lessons of the People's Communes
At the beginning of the founding of New China, social progress was remarkable and productive forces developed considerably, but the passion to surpass Britain and catch up with the United States and to enter communism at a running pace kept swelling. From agricultural production mutual-aid teams to elementary agricultural cooperatives, and then to advanced agricultural cooperatives, the forms of realizing public ownership were simplified into large-scale operation. Beginning in 1958, the People's Commune movement, modeled on the Soviet collective farms, spread across the country like a violent storm. It not only departed from the actual conditions of rural productive forces but also violated the principle of farmers' voluntariness, blindly pursuing speed and scale, causing serious losses to agriculture and farmers and bringing the national economy to the brink of collapse. After 1962, the People's Commune became fixed in rural areas as a system and organizational form, exerting a profound influence on rural areas and even the entire Chinese society for more than 20 years thereafter.
The management system combining government and commune was a prominent feature of the large communes. Without the combination of government and commune as a guarantee, the establishment and maintenance of large commune ownership would have been unimaginable. Commune ownership completely overlapped with the government's grassroots political power in rural areas, and thus commune ownership became an important content and appendage of administrative power at the same level. Under such a system, commune ownership constituted an important foundation of the combination of government and commune, while the combination of government and commune in turn safeguarded and strengthened commune ownership. In the commune system, the severe dependence of ownership on administrative power made administrative intervention in economic life a matter of course. The reason it could barely be maintained for a relatively long time was reliance on the coercion and guarantee of administrative force. The combination of government and commune was the pillar that sustained the commune system, and a powerful, sound and developed administrative system was the lifeline of the commune system.
The ownership of the "large in scale and highly collective" communes, which far exceeded the level of China's rural productive forces, was established mainly through the encouragement and coercion of administrative power. The artificially promoted commune system violated economic laws, shackled farmers' thinking and behavior, deprived farmers of their right to choose, stifled farmers' creative spirit, and made it difficult to mobilize the production enthusiasm of the grassroots and farmers. Therefore, it was inevitably punished by the laws of social development, and the direct consequences were a major decline in agricultural production and severe famine. It was not until after the reform and opening up that farmers finally gained the right to choose their business model, and more than one billion Chinese people truly broke the intergenerational transmission of insufficient food and clothing that had persisted for thousands of years. Agriculture had surplus, township and village enterprises flourished, which in turn stimulated the reform of urban state-owned enterprises and gradually established the basic framework of the socialist market economy.
The Current Predicament: Imitating American Family Farms, the Blind Pursuit of Large-Scale Operations Hides Crisis
The lingering fear from the disastrous consequences of following the Soviet model has not yet subsided, and the wave of enthusiasm for imitating the United States is rising again. Today, some places, with great enthusiasm, introduce the American "family farm" planting model and use mobilization, inducement and even coercion to promote large-scale land transfer. But for China's vast rural areas, which have little land and many people, land can only be moderately scaled.
Against this background, rural land transfer has become a hot spot and focus of widespread public attention. Behind the hype there are obvious misunderstandings, behavioral deviations and interest inducements. First, in terms of understanding, speeding up land transfer is regarded as an important path to promote urbanization, and large-scale land operation is equated with building modern agriculture. Based on the major premise that "enriching farmers means reducing farmers," some people reason from a macro, theoretical and logical perspective and conclude that "large-scale operations must be vigorously pursued to squeeze farmers off the land to adapt to the urbanization process." Second, in terms of behavior, they follow the "grand unification" and "militarized" working methods and one-sidedly pursue political achievements. Some places disregard the wishes and interests of the masses, one-sidedly emphasize the interests of the transferee, adopt administrative orders, and forcibly pair parties or forcibly take back farmers' contracted land to "build up big households." Third, under interest inducement, land transfer is used to realize "supporting the city through the countryside" and "making money from land." As urban non-agricultural construction land is transferred through market-oriented means, land transfer prices have risen sharply, but the compensation standard for requisitioning land from farmer collectives remains at a very low level, and the land transfer price is far higher than the compensation to farmers.
China's rural land transfer should be divided into three levels: The first level, which requires administrative force to promote, can be called "administrative transfer." How can a contracted land of less than ten mu per household, divided into seven or eight plots, be combined into one plot to achieve preliminary intra-household transfer from scattered pieces to a whole? This is something that a single household cannot do or do well and must rely on collective organizations to act in a unified way. It was subdivided by administrative force back then, and today it should still be integrated by administrative force, on the basis of which registration and issuance of certificates should be completed. In this regard, Mengcheng in Anhui, Minquan in Henan and other places have many successful experiences. The second level, which requires market promotion, can be called "market transfer." After completing the administrative integration of "one field" and doing a good job in registration and issuance of certificates, whether to cooperate, take shares or lease should be freely chosen by farmers according to market rules. The government should only provide services and must not forcibly intervene. The third level, which requires legal promotion, can be called "legal transfer." For example, mortgage, guarantee and sale are not allowed by current laws and can only be transferred according to law after the state amends the Constitution, the Land Administration Law, the Property Law, the Guarantee Law and other relevant laws. Governments at all levels should fully understand the original intention of the central government in proposing the promotion of land transfer and fully respect farmers' choices. The first thing they should do is grasp the "administrative transfer" well and make the "one field" solid. They should not only fix their eyes on "large-scale" enterprise-scale operations while disdaining "small-scale" household-scale operations. They should not be overly enthusiastic about intervening in "market transfer" and "legal transfer," so that what should be done is not done well and what should not be done is overdone. "Administrative transfer" is the foundation of "market transfer" and "legal transfer." Only by doing "administrative transfer" well can "market transfer" and "legal transfer" be smoothly advanced; otherwise many hidden dangers will be planted. At the same time, in the process of land transfer, several issues must be handled well: First, it must not disregard China's reality and violate economic laws. Land transfer is related to the level of industrialization and urbanization, the level of agricultural productivity, farmers' own overall quality, and the speed at which capital enters agriculture. Second, external forces must not be allowed to squeeze and push forward transfer. "Lawful, voluntary and compensated" must truly be put into practice, and in particular, behavior that forces or tricks farmers into transferring land for political achievements must be eliminated. Third, farmers' right to development must not be deprived. Farmers who transfer land should be guaranteed income from lease revenue, income from improved land resource utilization, income from employment, and income from industrial income growth through "project, base + farmers," leaving farmers a "living opening" to share in income growth. Fourth, contradictions and hidden dangers must not be left for future generations. It is necessary not only to solve the problem of how to "make it flow" but also to solve well the problems of how to "make it flow correctly," "make it flow smoothly" and "make it flow steadily." Fifth, the land requisition system must not be "discounted" or "shrunk." Be vigilant against the "number game" in the balance of occupied and supplemented cultivated land, and establish a comprehensive benefit evaluation and compensation mechanism in occupied and supplemented cultivated land and a grain production assessment mechanism for supplementing cultivated land in other places. Sixth, establish an access and exit system for agricultural land operations. There should be limits on operating agricultural land; not everyone can enclose land without producing benefits. Exit from operation must also not damage soil fertility, otherwise compensation should be made.
The logical goal of American agriculture is to pursue the maximization of labor output, while the logical goal of Chinese agriculture is to pursue the maximization of land output. Transplanting the imagined American agricultural operation model, which has few people and much land, to solve China's real problem of many people and little land can only bring the same kind of turmoil as the consequences of following the Soviet model.
The Development Path: Give Farmers Full Autonomy and Take a Modern Agricultural Path Suited to National Conditions and Public Will
Looking at China's more than 30 years of rural reform, almost all experience comes from grassroots creation. Such creations only need to be discovered, recognized, summarized, elevated and promoted, and then institutionalized and legalized. Therefore, China's agriculture must integrate China's actual conditions, discover the essence of traditional agriculture, learn from modern agricultural experience, truly hand the right to choose the business model to farmers, fully activate farmers' enthusiasm and creativity, and with "historical patience" walk well the road already generated beneath their feet.
⟦NL> Modern agriculture is a concept proposed relative to traditional agriculture. It refers to a complete industrial system formed by the mutual linkage of the primary, secondary and tertiary industries in rural areas and the upstream, midstream and downstream industrial chains. At present, in China's rural modern agricultural industrial chain, the proportion of processing industries using agricultural products as raw materials and service industries serving agriculture is too low. The urgent task is to vigorously develop agricultural product processing and service industries serving agriculture and accelerate the construction of a modern agricultural industrial system connecting the primary, secondary and tertiary industries in rural areas. Some people mistakenly equate modern agriculture with large-scale land operation, which is very one-sided. First, large-scale land operation still only works on the rural primary industry and is only part of the modern agricultural system. Second, judging from the agricultural development paths of Japan, South Korea and China's Taiwan, a developed modern agriculture can also be fully established on the basis of small-scale operation. Third, for a country like China with many people and little land, it cannot one-sidedly pursue operation scale but should take pursuing the land output rate as the primary goal. Modern agriculture requires scale, but as far as China is concerned, what has much room for development on the scale issue is the scale of industrial layout and the scale of organization, services, industrial chains and planting and breeding suitable for factory production. Actively developing farmers' specialized cooperative organizations, building chains integrating the primary, secondary and tertiary industries in agriculture, and building three-dimensional, efficient and intensive factory-based facility agriculture should be the key focus for realizing scale in modern agriculture with Chinese characteristics.
Farmers are the leading force in China's agriculture. The modernization of the main body is the key to agricultural modernization. Why does high efficiency produce low benefits? The fundamental reason is that the elements of traditional agriculture have not been injected with modern elements, and among these elements the first is the lack of modern consciousness among the labor force. Once farmers have modern consciousness, they have modern needs; once they have modern needs, they will pull the market to provide modern supply; once there is modern supply, farmers have modern capacity; once they have modern capacity, they will produce modern benefits, thereby achieving modern goals. Advancing agricultural modernization requires a stable, high-quality professional farmer workforce. At present, three major tasks should be effectively grasped: First, cultivate and accumulate outstanding agricultural talent. Second, cultivate and strengthen farmer organizations. Free up hands and feet to solve the problem of too few and too small farmer organizations, and strive to build a pluralistic governance structure in which farmer organizations, the market and society each perform their own duties, cooperate with one another and check and balance one another. Third, guide farmers to accurately identify their own occupational positioning. Fully give play to the regulatory function of policy, correctly grasp the direction of public opinion, guide farmers to flow rationally according to their own qualities and actual needs, and help them make the rational choice of whether to be farmers or workers in occupational differentiation, trying as much as possible not to become marginal people of the migratory-bird or amphibious type.
No one understands themselves better than farmers, no one understands their own choices better than farmers, and no one is more responsible to themselves than farmers. Whether land should be farmed by oneself, leased out, taken as shares or cooperated on, only farmers themselves know and understand best. There should absolutely not be a phenomenon in which some places, starting from the good vision of building modern agriculture, carefully design a system to strongly promote land transfer but in practice cause consequences harmful to farmers' interests. At present, giving farmers the right to choose is far more important than inducing farmers to take a certain path.