Lu Fuxing: the Innovation of farmland system and the Development of Rural economy

In theory, the current rural land system in China belongs to the separate ownership of the two rights of land, which in essence is quasi-state ownership. With the rapid development of economy and society, the demand for the innovation of farmland system is getting louder and louder. Only by speeding up the innovation of farmland system, defining the boundaries and responsibilities of farmland property rights, giving full play to the function of land production factors and stimulating the potential of land factors, can we meet the needs of the current rapid economic and social development in rural areas and re-stimulate the potential and vitality of rural development.

I. the theoretical basis of the innovation of farmland system

The theory of farmland system has a long history and has a solid foundation. Collective ownership of agricultural land in China is a special form of agricultural land system, and its fundamental requirement is to adhere to the collective ownership of land. At present, the theories of farmland system innovation are as follows:

1. Marxist theory of land rent. Marx pointed out: "No matter what the unique form of land rent is, all its types have one thing in common: the possession of land rent is the economic form through which land ownership is realized." [1] the core problem of the innovation of farmland ownership is the economic interests reflected in land rent. therefore, the theory of land rent is one of the important theories in the innovation of agricultural land system. Marx divides the land rent area into differential land rent and absolute land rent. He believes that differential land rent is a kind of excess profit, which is the excess profit obtained by renting better land to the landowner. Differential land rent is related to land grade, and the difference of land natural conditions is the natural condition or natural basis of land differential land rent. Absolute land rent refers to the rent obtained by the landowner by virtue of the monopoly of land ownership, which is the land rent absolutely owned by land ownership. Marx's land rent theory reveals the formation and grade of land rent, which is not only an important theoretical basis of agricultural land reform, but also one of the basic laws that must be followed in the innovation of land system. The innovation of agricultural land ownership must choose between the innovation of property right system and the form of ownership according to the economic law of land rent theory, otherwise, the innovation of agricultural land system will lack theoretical basis.

2. Property right theory. Property rights are a kind of property rights, including material materials and intangible assets. Property rights are tangible or intangible things that can be controlled or enjoyed by the subject of property rights, and must have cultural, scientific and economic value. Such as all kinds of machinery and equipment, production raw materials, intellectual property rights and so on. Property rights are exclusive, separable, divisible and incomplete. Separability is the main feature of property rights, which makes the rights of property rights belong to different subjects, for example, farmers in collective land can have the right to use land and income, while contractors can have the right of management. the investors of the enterprise can enjoy the income right of the enterprise property, and the operator of the enterprise can exercise the right to use the enterprise property. The transaction or transfer of property rights is determined by the separation of property rights. There are many forms of property rights transactions, such as contract management, leasing, shareholding, mergers and acquisitions and so on. At the same time, property rights can be exchanged, which can not only separate the functions and powers, but also can be further subdivided and exchanged after the separation, which makes the operation of property rights more complex and diversified. For example, the right of investors to choose managers of a joint stock limited company can be further divided into one share and one right. The establishment and subdivision of property rights should enable the subject of property rights to save social resources in the adjustment of economic interests. Clear property rights and clear boundaries can reduce the friction in the process of transaction, thus reducing the cost of transaction. The property right theory shows that the separation or division of the legal property right theory is not only the important theoretical basis of the current rural land contract responsibility system, but also the theoretical basis for the further innovation of agricultural land ownership.

3. Agglomeration economic theory. According to the agglomeration economic theory, economic activities are not evenly distributed in space, but economic collections or groups that show the characteristics of local concentration. According to the theory of agglomeration economy, the phenomenon of local concentration in space can improve the low efficiency in the decentralized state, and aggregation can cause the function of the whole system to be greater than the sum of the functions that can be realized in the decentralized state, that is, aggregation can form the effect of "1-1 > 2". Therefore, the agglomeration of enterprises in the local space can get the additional benefit of increasing scale returns, while the dispersion of farmers makes agriculture lack of agglomeration effect. Agglomeration theory is a spatial theory of external economies of scale. The theory of agglomeration economy shows that in order to adhere to the principle of centralized land use, the innovation of agricultural land system must aim at promoting the large-scale operation of land, and make the land gather into the hands of farming experts and people with higher science and technology. give full play to the scale effect of land.

4. Transaction cost theory. Transaction cost theory reveals that the main body of economic activities in the market transaction, each transaction has a cost. These costs include: (1) the cost of collecting the relevant transaction information, that is, the cost of finding the transaction; (2) the transaction is completed by the contract, and signing the contract requires the cost; (3) the supervision cost of supervising the completion of the contract, such as legal proceedings. The main body of the market sets up an enterprise in order to save transaction costs, and the transaction to be completed through the market can be completed within the enterprise, so the reason for the existence of the enterprise is to avoid transaction costs. According to the transaction cost theory, one of the main principles of system innovation is to save transaction costs, as is the case with any system innovation. Therefore, the purpose of farmland system innovation is not only to promote the rational flow of land elements, but also to minimize the transfer cost of land system. The transaction cost theory not only provides ideas for the innovation of agricultural land ownership, but also expands the space for the innovation of agricultural land system.

II. The path Choice of farmland system Innovation

Since the formation of farmland system in China, the innovation of farmland system has never stopped. With the continuous promotion of urbanization and industrialization in China, new contradictions and problems have emerged in the land system. How to innovate the existing land system has become a hot topic explored by many experts and scholars. At present, the path choice of land system innovation can be divided into three kinds:

Path one: start with the right of management and innovate on the basis of the separation of the two rights. The rural household contract responsibility system is the innovation that follows this path, which is also the path to encourage and support the innovation of land system in our country. The characteristics of this path are as follows: on the premise of insisting that the collective ownership of agricultural land remains unchanged, the management rights of farmers' land will be further solidified through the establishment of the system, including extending the contract period of farmers, allowing the inheritance and transfer of contracted land, promoting the circulation and maintenance and appreciation of land management rights, and increasing the property rights and interests of farmers. The path starting from the right of management is in line with the innovation of the agricultural land system of collective ownership of rural land in China, which can not only stabilize farmers' expectations of the right of management and eliminate their "fear of change". Moreover, it can promote the circulation and scale of land. At the present stage, it is not only conducive to give full play to the social security function of rural land, but also maintain the stability of rural society, in line with the purpose and requirements of the current land reform. Therefore, it is easily accepted by the government. However, with the development of social economy, the innovation space of this path is limited, and the scope of innovation is small because of the continuous expansion since 1978, especially with the deepening of rural social and economic development. The universality of rural development is relatively poor, on this basis, we need to further expand the space of innovation.

Path 2: start with ownership and innovate in the fundamental system. Starting from the path of agricultural land ownership, this paper tries to innovate the degree of agricultural land system and release the development space of rural areas through the reform of agricultural land ownership. This path is divided into two distinct directions. The first is the direction of nationalization. Those who hold this view believe that the change of land ownership from collective ownership to state ownership, that is, the nationalization of rural land, is an effective way to innovate the current rural land system. They advocated that the land should be nationalized and then permanent tenancy to the farmers. In theory, the implementation of land state-owned should be able to prevent the infringement of farmers' rights and interests, and implement the nationalization of agricultural land, the village collective responsible persons have no right to interfere with the disposal of rural land in theory. Farmers' land property rights are unified by the state, which can give full play to the benefits of land and promote the large-scale use of land. However, from a practical point of view, there are many difficulties in the management of rural land by the state as an agent. at the present stage in China, the practice of managing rural land is difficult to achieve, and it is even more difficult to implement the subject of national ownership. Coupled with the vast territory of our country, it is not realistic for the country to exercise land ownership uniformly. The second is the direction of privatization. Some people think that the key to the innovation of agricultural land system is to clarify the property rights, and the property rights of the existing collective ownership are vague, so the efficiency of land use is not high. They advocate that the land should be completely privatized and farmers should have the ownership of the land, so that they can cherish the land and make full use of it. The problem is that land privatization violates China's traditional socialist theory, because the traditional socialist theory holds that the collective ownership of rural land is the foundation of socialism and the premise of socialist public ownership. Therefore, this path innovation has broken through the bottom line of the fundamental system of our country. at present, although there are extreme propositions of nationalization and privatization in the current discussion on the system of rural land ownership, it has always failed to occupy the mainstream position of theoretical research and policy exploration. [2]

Path 3: starting from the property right, the property right can be socialized and innovated. The collective ownership of agricultural land in which the property rights can be socialized means that the collective property rights of agricultural land join social economic organizations or other organizations, and go beyond the scope of the collective to combine property rights and operate to maintain and increase their value. One is to join social and economic organizations or other organizations in the name of collectives. although collective organizations have the ownership of land, other powers are exercised jointly or jointly with social organizations. the most typical is to jointly run enterprises in the name of collectives or to buy shares in collective land. The other is that the collective organization first contracts the farmland to farmers within the collective organization or subleases it to other individuals, and then farmers or other units and individuals that own collective land operate in the form of land ownership or participation in cooperation. the collective only owns the ownership of agricultural land, and other rights such as the right of income, transfer, possession and control of agricultural land are exercised by the shareholders or participants. This kind of collective organization or collective members join enterprises or larger collectives as shareholders, which is actually the socialization of farmland collective property rights. The demutualization of agricultural land collective property rights promotes the socialization of agricultural land property rights, releases the mobility of agricultural land, and meets the requirements of large-scale agricultural land. Therefore, under the premise of not changing the basic status of household contract management, we should think of ways to divide the property rights of collective ownership of land, and then combine freely on the basis of clear property rights to form economies of scale and change the situation of diseconomies of scale. to promote the circulation of land use rights and take the road of moderate scale operation has become one of the paths of current practice.

At present, the main forms of collective ownership innovation of agricultural land are as follows: first, the household contract management system. The household land contract management system is a form of agricultural production responsibility system in which farmers contract land and other means of production and production tasks to collective organizations. The second is the two-field system. The cultivated land is divided into two categories, one is "grain field", which is evenly distributed according to the number of peasant households, and the other is "responsible land" or "contracted land". The "rations field" is evenly distributed to ensure the food security of farmers, while the "contracted land" is contracted according to the person, according to the labor force or through bidding. Among the two ways of "two-field system", the former embodies the principle of the common plain, while the latter embodies the principle of efficiency. The third is demutualization. Demutualization does not change the collective ownership of land, nor does it involve the transfer of household contractual management rights, but only the shareholding of household contractual management rights, which can realize the scale operation of land and the capitalization of land property rights. The fourth is the "four wasteland" auction. The "four wasteland" auction is a public sale of the right to the use of the "four wasteland" land, which mainly occurs in the areas where the economy is underdeveloped. Compared with other innovative forms of agricultural land property right system, the "four wasteland" auction makes the reform of agricultural land property right system no longer stay in the increment of perfecting the right to use, but enter the stage of stock adjustment of land use right. The auction of the four wasteland use rights has given the operators full and perfect contract rights. through the auction of the four wasteland use rights, it has solved the long-standing obstacles to the circulation of land use rights in the agricultural land system. Fifth, the permanent tenancy system. This is an improvement to adapt to the current farmland household contract responsibility system, and its purpose is to give farmers the permanent right to use the land and to realize the free circulation of the land. The sixth is the public land system. The public land system is the innovation of the Chinese traditional clan "public land system". Seventh, land trust. Land trust is a form of capitalization of land by entrusting land to special institutions through contracts. Land trust has changed the original mode of operation of land and realized the innovation of land use and management system.

III. The factors restricting the innovation of farmland system

Farmland system is not only the focus of rural reform, but also the concentrated expression of farmers' interests. promoting the innovation of farmland system is an important guarantee for the release of rural productive forces. However, there are still many restrictive factors in the innovation of farmland system in China. Specifically, there are:

(1) the restriction of laws and regulations. Law is not only the fundamental guarantee for the orderly innovation of collective ownership of agricultural land, but also the driving force to promote innovation. In order to protect farmers' land rights and interests, China has promulgated laws such as "Land Management Law" and "Rural Land contract Law" and some administrative regulations, which give farmers a long-term and stable right to land contractual management. But on the other hand, these laws and regulations solidify the adjustment of land and prevent the flow of land, because the state protects the long-term stability of rural land contract relationship in the form of law and clearly stipulates that it will remain unchanged for 30 years. Within this legal framework, farmers enjoy the decentralization of possession, use, income and transfer of the existing contracted land. In addition, the property Law gives individual farmers the right to appeal and resist infringement of individual rights and interests in the name of "collective". That is, it stipulates that "if the decisions made by collective economic organizations, villagers' committees or their responsible persons infringe upon the legitimate rights and interests of collective members, the infringed collective members may request the people's court to revoke them", and clearly stipulated for the first time the right to contract inheritance of cultivated land, grassland and woodland. The national law not only maintains the stable contract right of rural land and protects the interests of farmers, but also limits the space for the innovation of rural land system. Under the existing laws and regulations, how to innovate the collective ownership of agricultural land and give full play to the resource efficiency of agricultural land is a challenge for the continuous innovation of agricultural land system.

(2) the conditionality of social system. China's agricultural land system has a strong color of planned economy, which overemphasizes the socialist characteristics of the land system and neglects or negates the property attribute of the land. Since the reform and opening up, the central rural land policy has adopted to extend the contract period, expand the scope of land power of farmers, and strengthen the clarity and legalization of ownership relations. However, all the reforms of the land system follow the bottom line of collective ownership of agricultural land, insisting that collective ownership of agricultural land is the symbol of rural socialism. Under the presupposition of this sign, the subdivision of collective ownership of agricultural land has been recognized and implemented, but for other reforms of subdivision, it is still very difficult to break the ice of the farmland system, and it has not really adhered to the socialist system standard of productive forces. Although the privatization of agricultural land has been called for a long time and there is a lot of theoretical support, the collective ownership of agricultural land is still indestructible. The farmland system involves the survival and development of 800 million farmers, and the particularity of farmland does not allow the reform to fail, so the innovation of collective ownership of agricultural land must be restricted by the policies of our country. How to break through the restrictions of public ownership and private ownership, and how to give full play to the property resources of farmers in farmland is a difficult problem to explore in the innovation of farmland system.