Central Committee Issues Full Text of Decision on Rural Reform

On October 19, Chinese authorities released the full text of the Communist Party Central Committee's decision on rural reform.  The decision calls for expanding the ability of Chinese farmers to transfer, lease, rent, or exchange their land-use rights, consistent with the predictions of earlier news reports. 

The Decision Regarding Several Important Issues in Promoting Rural Reform sets out a broad set of goals for Party and government officials regarding rural reform.  In addition to calling for liberalizing the market in land-use rights, other goals include:

• Strengthening Party leadership over rural work.  The decision emphasizes that local Party committees are to continue play the core role in guiding rural affairs.

• Addressing the rural-urban divide.  The decision calls on officials to progressively work toward ensuring that migrant workers enjoy the same rights to education, health services, and other public services that established urban residents do.

• Improving rural governance.  The decision calls on officials to steadily work to ensure equal per-person representation between rural and urban districts in local legislatures.

• Expanding rural health care.
  

With regard to land-use rights, the Decision states that Chinese authorities should:

加强土地承包经营权流转管理和服务，建立健全土地承包经营权流转市场，按照依法自愿有偿原则，允许农民以转包、出租、互换、转让、股份合作等形式流转土地承包经营权，发展多种形式的适度规模经营。有条件的地方可以发展专业大户、家庭农场、农民专业合作社等规模经营主体。

Strengthen the management of, and services for, the transfer of use rights to contracted land.  Establish and improve the market for the transfer of use rights to contracted land.  In accordance with the principles of legality, voluntariness, and compensation, allow farmers to transfer their use rights to contracted land via subcontract, lease, swap, transfer, or joint-stock cooperation, and develop many types of appropriate management of scale.  In areas with the appropriate conditions, it is permitted to develop entities of management of scale, such as large professional farmers, family farms, and rural professional cooperatives. (Rough translation – ed.)

This call is not entirely new.  As early as 1993, the Central Committee and State Council issued a set of policy measures on rural reform calling for a degree of freedom in transferring land-use rights.  Specifically, they called for:

在坚持土地集体所有和不改变土地用途的前提下，经发包方同意，允许土地的使用权依法有偿转让。少数第二、第三产业比较发达，大部分劳动力转向非农产业并有稳定收入的地方，可以从实际出发，尊重农民的意愿，对承包土地作必要的调整，实行适度的规模经营。

In holding to the principles of collective land ownership, and not altering the use of the land, then given the agreement of the farmer who has contracted the land, the transfer of land-use rights for compensation is permitted.  In a few areas where the secondary and tertiary industries are relatively developed, and in which the majority of labor has transferred to non-agricultural employment and has stable income, then depending on the actual circumstances and respecting the will of the farmers, necessary, adjustments to land contracting can be undertaken, and an appropriate scale of management implemented. (Rough translation – ed.)

Two differences leap out.  First, the language in the 2008 decision explicitly embraces the concept of a market in land-use rights.  Second, the 2008 decision explicitly embraces the development of large-scale farming operations. Given that the Chinese Communist Party a) came to power in 1949 by eliminating rural landlords and b) has adhered to the principles of state and collective ownership of rural land since the 1950s, this is a striking shift.

Comments

[Wenchi Yu Perkins]

Carl,

Great piece! Any thoughts on how this might impact farmers' hukou status, if any?

Thanks.
Wenchi

[Harjinder Motiwala]

I agree.
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[real estate]

It's fascinating as an Australian for me to examine how such seemingly democratic processes take place within a communist state.

It makes me wonder whether China can long continue as a successful economy with it's current political ideology and economic model.

China may be rather a different animal to the failed communist experiment that was the former Soviet Union.

Andrew
Australia