There is no need to reproduce a land rentier class.

As we all know, the funding for China's urban infrastructure construction comes from land finance. Generally speaking, at present, the financial capacity of Chinese local governments is very limited, most of the financial revenue of urban governments relying on taxes can only be kept running, and there is little excess revenue for costly urban infrastructure construction. Almost without exception, the infrastructure construction of large and medium-sized cities across the country mostly comes from land finance, that is, the so-called income from land sales. At present, land finance has been widely criticized. Let's talk about land finance.

Land finance can be referred to from two aspects: original meaning and extension. The original meaning of land finance refers to the land transfer income obtained by the local government, and the extended meaning also includes the local government cash financing platform, relying on all kinds of financing activities carried out by land mortgage, namely "land finance".

From 2001 to 2010, the income of local government land transfer fees increased from 129.6 billion yuan to 2.9 trillion yuan, accounting for 76.6% of local financial revenue from 16.6%. Although there are obvious fluctuations from year to year, the proportion in most years is 40% 50%. From the first half of 2008 to the end of 2012, the loan balance of local government financing vehicles increased from 1.7 trillion yuan to 9.2 trillion yuan, accounting for 13.8% of China's bank loan balance from about 7.6%.

According to the national regulations on the use of land transfer fees, land transfer fees are mainly used for urban infrastructure construction. It is not surprising that such a huge income from land transfer fees and financing secured by land have been invested in urban infrastructure construction, and urban infrastructure has been greatly improved in a short period of time, so that cities are built like Europe.

The question is whether the land finance is reasonable and sustainable.

Article 43 of the Land Management Law stipulates that any unit or individual who needs to use land for construction must apply for the use of state-owned land in accordance with the law. The state-owned land applied for use in accordance with the law includes the land owned by the state and the land expropriated by the state that used to be collectively owned by farmers.

Article 47 stipulates that if land is expropriated, compensation shall be given according to the original use of the expropriated land. The sum of land compensation and resettlement compensation shall not exceed 30 times the average annual output value of the three years before the land is expropriated.

The above two provisions of the Land Management Law can be called the constitutional order of China's land system. The so-called constitutional order means that through the new democratic revolution and the socialist revolution, New China has eliminated the private ownership of land and the rentier class. Because the value-added income of non-agricultural use of agricultural land brought by economic development and urban expansion should be "increased to the public", and farmers who happen to have the right of contracted management of cultivated land should not occupy all the value-added income of non-agricultural use of land. This constitutional order in the arrangement of China's land system eliminates unearned gains and ensures that the fruits of economic development are shared by the whole people, which is of great significance and is also a great achievement of China's socialist revolution.

The above constitutional order of China's land system can be popularly expressed as the government "expropriating land at low prices and selling land at high prices", expropriating land according to the value of agricultural use of land, and selling land according to the value of non-agricultural use of land, and the income from land sales minus the cost of land expropriation, it constitutes the land financial collection of the local government. Because the land sale is carried out in the form of bidding and auction, and the land price is also known as the land transfer fee, therefore, the land financial revenue is equal to the land transfer fee income minus the land expropriation cost.

However, the above statement of "land expropriation at a low price and selling land at a high price" should be careful, because only part of the land is really used for commercial and residential construction. The expropriated farmers' land is mainly used in three aspects, one is infrastructure construction land, the second is industrial land, and the third is commercial service land.

In 2012, for example, the total amount of construction land actually supplied in 2012 reached 10 million mu, of which 40% was used for infrastructure construction, and about 65% was really used for urban construction, and about 6.5 million mu was used for real commercial and residential land. that is, the part that can be sold accounts for about 35%. In other words, of the 10 million mu of construction land supplied throughout the year, only about 2.3 million mu can be sold for commercial services, less than 1/4 of the total land supply.

Economic development and urban expansion are bound to occupy land. Urbanization is not only the urbanization of population, but also the urbanization of land. If the land previously used for agricultural use is used for urban construction, the land will form value-added income. Land value-added income is related to two factors, one is land use control, the other is the value of land in a specific location. Specific location is related to planning, the premise is that urban expansion needs to increase the use of construction land. The value-added income generated from the conversion of agricultural land into construction land has nothing to do with the efforts of contracted farmers to manage agricultural land, while China is a country that has eliminated the private ownership of land, so it is legal and reasonable to compensate farmers according to the agricultural value of land. Applying the value-added income from non-agricultural use of land to the urban infrastructure construction shared by the whole people has realized the ideal of "geographical sharing" and "raising prices to the public" advocated by Dr. Sun Yat-sen.

The non-agricultural use of agricultural land will form value-added income, which is not the special magic of the land itself, but because of the value-added income of non-agricultural land use brought by economic development, urban expansion and national regulation of land use. Chen Xiwen said: "the best land in Seattle, USA, is only US $5000 per acre in terms of agricultural land, but if farmland is planned for construction land, it can reach US $200000 per acre, a difference of 39 times."

At present, academia and policy departments have a strong argument for giving farmers greater land rights, such as the so-called establishment of a unified urban and rural construction land market, urban and rural construction land "with the same rights and land", "return rights", and so on. Behind all these arguments, it is necessary to change the constitutional order of the current land system in China. It is necessary to allow farmers as the main body to participate in the supply of construction land so as to break the current pattern of benefit distribution in which the state monopolizes the market of construction land and liberalizes the secondary market of land. To put it simply, farmers should be allowed to sell land for construction freely, so as to enable farmers to obtain the value-added benefits of non-agricultural use of agricultural land.

One of the most deceptive aspects of this statement is to concede benefits to farmers and let them get the land benefits that originally belong to them. The actual situation is that, according to the constitutional order of China's land system, suburban farmers only have the right to contract and manage agricultural land, and they do not have the legitimacy of value-added income from non-agricultural use of agricultural land.

Assuming that the suburban farmers are allowed to sell the contracted land as the main body of the transaction, the suburban farmers will in fact become the land-rentier class, and they can obtain a large amount of land benefits, but, this part of the farmers who can sell the land may only be a small number of people in the suburbs, and it is impossible for all farmers to have the opportunity to sell the land so as to obtain the value-added income from the non-agricultural use of land. Therefore, this statement actually stands not on the peasant market but on the rentier's standpoint. The problem is that the rentiers have been eliminated in New China, and it is necessary for us to rebuild the rentier class.

Another suggestion is to tax the value-added income from the sale of land by suburban farmers. But this is also a problem, because if farmers, as the main body of land owners, are free to sell their land, they must ask for the market price of commercial and residential land to sell their land. Even if the government wants to build urban infrastructure and can forcibly expropriate farmers' land, it must compensate farmers according to market prices. According to Chen Xiwen, only about 1% of the national construction land is used for commercial and residential use, and 40% is used for infrastructure construction, then the state levies a high tax of 50% on the income of farmers' land, and the land tax levied by the government is not enough to collect land for urban infrastructure construction, not to mention cheap industrial land and well-built urban infrastructure.

One of the achievements of economic development is urbanization, which is both the urbanization of population and the urbanization of land. Land urbanization means the transformation of suburban agricultural land into urban construction land. The non-agricultural use of agricultural land will produce huge value-added income, which is mainly occupied by suburban landowners in private land ownership countries, thus forming a huge parasitic and decadent class of land rentiers in the suburbs.

The land system arrangement in China has eliminated the land rentier class, and the value-added income from the non-agricultural use of agricultural land is mainly in the hands of local governments in the form of land finance, which is mainly used for urban infrastructure construction, thus achieving "price increase" and "geographical sharing". This is the reason that although China is a developing country, it is comparable to the urban infrastructure of developed countries.

China's land rentier class has been eliminated, of course, there is no need to produce another one.