Rural Collective Assets Must Not Become the Private Property of a Few

Because property rights and powers are unclear and the attribution of interests is undefined, the collective economy has encountered quite a few problems in actual operation. Only when farmers have clear protection of property rights and stable income from property rights can the moderately scaled land management, the growth of new types of business entities, and the transfer of more farmers to cities all proceed smoothly

General Secretary Xi Jinping recently pointed out at the fifth meeting of the Central Leading Group for Comprehensively Deepening Reform that the goal and direction of actively developing farmers' shareholding cooperation and the pilot reform to grant shareholding powers over collective assets is to explore granting farmers more property rights. This important speech further clarified the major policies for comprehensively deepening rural reform since the Third Plenary Session of the 18th Central Committee of the Party, and further refined the pilot reforms of forms of realizing rural collective ownership, mainly the reform of shareholding powers over collective assets, that various localities are currently actively exploring.

The reform of shareholding powers over collective assets is an important part of comprehensively deepening rural reform at present. Against this background, it has two basic essentials: first, the reform is meant to protect the rights of members of farmers' collective economic organizations and grant farmers more property rights, and no matter which form of powers is adopted, farmers' property rights and interests must not be made smaller, let alone be done away with; second, the reform is meant to establish a new mechanism for operating the rural collective economy that meets the requirements of the market economy, so that the collective economy can develop and grow stronger. A precise grasp of these two points can ensure that the reform of shareholding powers over rural collective assets advances on the correct track.

In our country, rural collective assets mainly include two major parts: first, resource-based assets, such as land, forest land, grassland, and water surfaces; second, operational assets, such as storefronts, factory buildings, and business organizations in which shares are held in the name of the collective. For resource-based assets, since reform and opening up, a form of operation based mainly on household contracted management has gradually been implemented; for operational assets, various forms of operation have emerged in practice in different places, with some mainly operated by the village collective and others mainly leased out. On the whole, collective assets have developed and grown stronger in operation, and farmers' rights and interests have been protected.

However, because property rights and powers are unclear and the attribution of interests is undefined, the collective economy has encountered quite a few problems in actual operation. Some rural collective organizations arbitrarily contract out and take back collective land, and when some rural collective organizations lease operational assets, to whom they are leased and at what price they are leased, farmers who are members of the village collective rarely have any say or right to know. In particular, with the expansion in recent years of various land expropriation and land enclosure practices, a small number of rural collective leaders have even treated collective assets as a "family feast" for personal enrichment, embezzling interests that belong to the farmers of the village collective. The "huge rural corruption" and "huge greed of village officials" frequently exposed by the media recently are mostly related to this unclear property rights over collective assets. This requires us to truly clarify property rights and improve powers over rural collective assets.

At the same time, as our country's national and agricultural conditions develop and change, the practical questions of who will farm the land and how to farm it have become more urgent. The emergence of new-type professional farmers, family farms, and more specialized large-scale households requires us to step up exploration of effective forms of realizing the "separation of three rights" of rural land ownership, contracting rights, and operational rights. Only when farmers have clear protection of property rights and stable income from property rights can the moderately scaled land management, the growth of new types of business entities, and the transfer of more farmers to cities, which are needed for agricultural modernization with Chinese characteristics, proceed smoothly. Under such circumstances, clearly dividing shareholding powers over collective assets can no longer be delayed.

Judging from practice in recent years, the forms explored in various places for reforming shareholding powers over rural collective assets have been diverse. In some economically developed areas, where the scale of assets is relatively large, the proportion of agriculture is relatively small, and the returns from land output are relatively higher, implementing shareholding cooperative reform of collective assets, including land, has become a common choice; in some areas where the level of economic development is not yet high, rural collective organizations have few assets other than resource-based assets such as land contracted to households. Some of these areas have explored farmers' shareholding cooperation, such as land shareholding cooperation and specialized cooperation, while others have encouraged various forms of transfer of land operational rights. No matter which form is adopted, all reflect one common feature, namely the determination of rights: either turning collective assets into shares, or clarifying contracted land, either determining rights and land, or determining rights and shares without determining land.

This direction of exploration is on the right track and the path is correct. Rural conditions in our country differ vastly, so there will certainly be different requirements for the forms of realizing collective ownership. But no matter which form is adopted, an important premise is to protect the rights of members of farmers' collective economic organizations, not to embezzle farmers' interests, and even less to let rural collective assets become a "family feast" for a few people.