Strengthening the Construction of Collective Land right system and promoting the Reform of Rural Land system

The Central Committee of the Communist Party of China adopted the "Rural Land Acquisition, Collective Business Construction Land Market, Homestead System Reform Plan", and established the guiding ideology, basic principles, implementation path and guarantee measures for the reform. At present, relevant departments are carrying out relevant pilot work intensively in accordance with the requirements of the reform plan. This work will have a far-reaching impact on further improving the socialist market economic system, promoting urban-rural integration and strengthening the construction of a new socialist countryside. The author thinks, want to carry out above-mentioned three reform job smoothly, must reform further and perfect current rural collective land right system, assure reform job accords with central put forward "hold to public ownership, hold to farmland red line and safeguard farmer interest" basic principle.

Why reform and improve the collective land rights system to such a high level? This is because the author has seen from the cases of farmers 'complaints about land over the years that whether land should be requisitioned or not is not the core issue concerned by petitioners, and the compensation standard for land requisition is not the focus of petitioners' entanglement. The main problem that petitioners are concerned about is that land requisition will be levied, and the compensation standard will be low. However, even if the compensation is very low, it will not reach the hands of the expropriated farmers in the end. It will either be intercepted by the grass-roots government and organizations at various levels, or will be embezzled and squandered by the leaders of the village committee or village group. Behind the problem, in the final analysis, farmers 'land rights have not been effectively implemented. The collective ownership of land has become owned by village cadres to some extent, but farmers, as members of the collective, cannot exercise their collective rights or enjoy the benefits they should enjoy as members of the collective. Local governments also lack "right consciousness" and respect for collective land ownership, use rights and other rights. Collective land rights are often replaced or even violated by their own administrative powers. If these problems are not solved, firstly, the problems existing in the past land requisition work cannot be solved; secondly, if the collective construction land is allowed to freely circulate, the village and group cadres may further intensify and illegally sell the collectively owned land and infringe on the legitimate rights and interests of collective members because their power is not restricted by the rights of collective members. As a result, collective land ownership will still be owned by village cadres in disguised form, farmers 'interests will still be unable to be guaranteed, and the red line of cultivated land protection will still be difficult to maintain, thus deviating from the original intention of this rural land system reform and violating the reform principles set by the central government. Therefore, in order to guarantee the smooth progress of rural land system reform, we must reform and perfect the current rural land rights system and strengthen the construction of collective land rights system.

1. Clarifying collective land ownership is the first step in strengthening the construction of collective land rights system

Collective land ownership is not clear, it is impossible to define the collective land use rights such as land contract management rights, homestead use rights, collective construction land use rights, and it is impossible to realize the smooth and effective circulation of collective land use rights. The reason why the circulation of collective land use right stagnates and has many difficulties in the past 20 years is that it ignores the premise and foundation of defining collective land ownership and directly carries out the circulation of collective land use right. Therefore, strengthening collective land rights system construction must first clarify collective land ownership.

(1) Further implement the three types of farmers 'collective land ownership subjects: township (town), village and villager group

For a long time, both theoretical and practical circles have been entangled in the question of whether collective land ownership should be determined for townships, villages or villagers 'groups. The main reason is that the Land Management Law promulgated in 1986 stipulates "collective ownership by village farmers" as the basic form of rural collective land ownership, while "collective ownership by township farmers" and "collective ownership by villagers 'groups" are stipulated as exceptions. This is a misunderstanding. In fact, whether it is a township (town) peasant collective, a village peasant collective, or a villager group peasant collective, all have their own land, and the boundaries are very clear. The main reason is that during the period of the people's commune, the management system of "three-level ownership, team-based" was implemented, and the ownership of land was demarcated on the basis of basic accounting units. There were three situations: (1) The production team was the basic accounting unit, which was more than 90% in the whole country. In this case, most of the land belongs to the production teams, but the production brigades and people's communes to which the production teams belong also own a small amount of land;(2) the production brigades are the basic accounting units, and this case does not exceed 10%. In this case, there were no production teams, most of the land belonged to the production brigades, but the communes where the production brigades were located also owned a small amount of land;(3) the people's commune was the basic accounting unit, which was almost impossible, because only a few dozen people's communes in the country at that time used the commune as the basic accounting unit. In this case the production teams and brigades cease to exist and the land belongs entirely to the people's communes. Therefore, judging from the amount of land occupied, the production teams occupied the vast majority of collective land at that time, while the production brigades and people's communes also occupied a small amount of collective land. In the early 1980s, the people's communes began to disintegrate. With the transformation of communes into townships (towns), production brigades into villages and production squads into villagers 'groups, the land formerly owned by people's communes, production brigades and production squads has been correspondingly changed into township (town) peasant collectives, village peasant collectives and villagers' groups peasant collectives. In the first round of household contracting, if the land belongs to the collective of villagers 'groups and peasants, the land shall be distributed equally by villagers' groups; if the land belongs to the collective of village peasants, the land shall be distributed equally by villages; if the land belongs to the collective of township peasants, the township government shall be responsible for the operation and management. Although in many places, due to the imperfect structure of villagers 'groups, the land collectively owned by farmers in villagers' groups is contracted out by village committees on behalf of villagers 'groups, the land is still distributed equally by groups, and the ownership of land still belongs to villagers' groups. Therefore, there is no question of whether the land of the peasant collective should be given to the township (town), village or villagers 'group, and whose land should be given to whom. Obviously, the practice of artificially changing the subject of land ownership regardless of the actual situation will not work and will certainly arouse strong opposition from the broad masses of peasants and even cause social unrest. In carrying out the registration and certification work of rural collective land ownership, relevant departments shall do their utmost to determine collective land to the real ownership subject in accordance with the requirements of the central government on "issuing collective land ownership certificates to each subject with ownership". However, due to the tight schedule, heavy tasks, and some local governments worried that the issuance of certificates would affect land acquisition, the land ownership certificates that should be issued to villagers 'groups and farmers' collectives were still not issued to villagers 'groups, but to villages. Therefore, we must combine this rural land system reform with the unified registration of real estate to solve this problem as soon as possible.

In addition, in the past, in the adjustment of rural administrative divisions, the construction of towns by immigrants and the linkage between urban and rural construction land increase and decrease, many places merged rural groups, which caused great difficulties to the confirmation of the main body of collective land ownership, because the original several peasant collectives merged into one peasant collective. If the ownership of land is determined for the merged peasant collectives, the original peasant collectives will certainly not agree because of the difference in the quantity and quality of the land occupied by the original peasant collectives, thus leading to new land disputes; if it is determined for the original peasant collectives, the original village groups will no longer exist. The author suggests that, in this case, new collective economic organizations should be established according to the principle of "separating government from enterprises and separating government from society", taking the original peasant collectives as units, and confirming them as the main body of collective land ownership. The newly formed peasant collective economic organization is responsible for the management of collectively owned land, and the merged village group is responsible for the management of social affairs.

(2) Clarify the representative of the main body of collective land ownership

The original intention of abolishing the people's commune system was to realize the separation of government and society and the separation of politics and economy. However, after the abolition of the people's commune system, although the administrative and social management functions of the former people's commune, production brigade and production team were separated to the township (town) government, village committee and villagers 'group respectively, no corresponding organization was established in most areas to exercise land ownership on behalf of them. As a result, township (town) farmers collective land ownership exercised by township (town) government, village collective land ownership exercised by the village committee, villagers group farmers collective land ownership exercised by the village committee or ultra vires, or no representative exercise. Township governments are government organizations, village committees and villagers 'groups are villagers' autonomous organizations. It is obviously contrary to legal principles for them to exercise collective land ownership respectively, and it also provides convenience for administrative power to replace or even infringe collective land ownership in disguised form. In recent years, although some localities have established agricultural, industrial and commercial companies and economic cooperatives in accordance with the requirements of "separating government from society and separating politics from economy" to represent the exercise of land ownership, the actual responsible persons of these organizations are still township (town) government leaders and village committee cadres, and the separation of government from society and politics from economy has not been achieved. Therefore, to effectively solve the problem of collective land ownership representatives, we must truly implement the separation of government and society, political and economic separation. For village and group collective land, the ownership must be exercised by representatives elected by the members of the peasant collective, not by village committees or village cadres as administrative subjects; for township (town) collective land, nationalization can be considered under appropriate conditions. In recent years, Guangdong Nanhai has been promoting the reconstruction of rural collective economic organizations in accordance with the principle of "separating government from enterprises and separating politics from economy", and strictly distinguishing party affairs, village affairs and economic affairs of rural communities, so as to prevent administrative power from replacing or even infringing collective land ownership.

(3) Clearly define the qualifications of farmers 'collective members

To define the subject of collective land ownership and determine the representative of the subject of collective land ownership, the premise is to define the membership of farmers 'collective. In order to determine the membership of peasant collective reasonably, we must focus on solving two problems: one is the confusion of peasant collective membership and villager identity. Members of peasant collectives are members of economic organizations, while villagers are citizens and members of their community organizations. The two concepts are completely different and cannot be confused. During the period of the people's commune, because of the immobility of the population, the members of the peasant collective were actually villagers. However, with the reform and opening up and the development of socialist market economy, great changes have taken place in the identity of rural population. In economically developed areas and urban-rural areas, there may be three identities of collective members, villagers and urban residents in a village. Collective members must be villagers, but villagers are not necessarily collective members, urban residents are certainly not collective members. Therefore, the stipulation in the Land Administration Law and the Rural Land Contracting Law that the exercise of collective land ownership requires the consent of more than 2/3 of the members of the villagers 'meeting or more than 2/3 of the villagers' representatives obviously confuses the two identities of "villagers" and "collective members." It should be stipulated that the exercise of collective land ownership shall be agreed upon by more than 2/3 of the members of the peasant collective assembly or by more than 2/3 of the representatives of the collective members. To take a step back, villagers 'meetings can only decide the collective land ownership of village farmers, but not the collective land ownership of township and village groups. Second, the status change caused by the acquisition and loss of collective membership of farmers. Whether the newly born population, the extra born population, the married women, the extra son-in-law, the adopted children, the immigrants, etc. have obtained the collective membership of farmers, and whether the deceased, the married women, the college students, the enlisted personnel, the urban employment personnel, etc. lose the collective membership have not been solved for a long time in practice. According to relevant media reports, in a certain village on the outskirts of Baotou, the members of the peasant collective were divided into six grades, each of which enjoyed different land rights. In some economically developed regions, in order not to lose membership, there has even been a phenomenon that girls do not marry. Therefore, it is necessary to make reasonable provisions on the acquisition and loss of membership of peasant collectives as soon as possible. Otherwise, collective land ownership cannot be exercised correctly.

(4) Clearly define the content and exercise mode of collective members 'rights

Although the main body of peasant collective land ownership has been defined, the representative of ownership has been determined, and the acquisition and loss of collective membership has been stipulated, if the rights of collective members are not clearly defined, the purpose of safeguarding the land rights of the broad masses of peasants cannot be achieved. Therefore, the content and exercise mode of collective members 'rights should be clearly defined in legislation. One is to ensure that members of peasant collectives enjoy full decision-making power in matters such as land contracting, homestead allocation, mobile land adjustment, auction of "four wasteland", approval and circulation of collective construction land, income distribution, etc.; the other is to clearly stipulate the procedures and methods for members of peasant collectives to exercise their rights, and gradually improve the procedures and systems for voting forms, meeting records, signature of representatives and filing of documents on major matters; and the third is to stipulate the relief system when the rights of members are violated. In practice, once infringement or dispute occurs, it is difficult for farmers as a vulnerable group to get effective relief.

(v) Full empowerment of collective land ownership

Jurisprudentially speaking, ownership should include the power of possession, use, income and disposition. However, the collective land ownership lacks the power of disposition and income, and cannot be called ownership in the true sense. The most typical is that collective land must be expropriated as state-owned before it can enter the market. This has also become one of the main reasons for the emergence of "small property houses" and illegal land use. Therefore, in this rural land system reform work, collective land ownership should be endowed with complete power and the right to income and disposal. The most important thing is to narrow the scope of land requisition. Except for expropriation due to public interests, farmers 'collective land can be used directly for construction or through transfer, shareholding or joint venture as long as it conforms to the plan. If the collective land ownership power is incomplete, safeguarding and realizing farmers 'land rights and interests is still empty talk.