Starting from the household contract responsibility system

The formation of the right system of farmland contract management

1. The establishment of household contract system

The third Plenary session of Communist Party of China's Eleventh Central Committee opened the curtain of China's reform and opening up, and the reform of the rural land contract system became the forerunner. This institutional change, which had a great impact on the fate of hundreds of millions of farmers and even the whole country, started in poor areas at first, then was praised by local and central leaders with a sense of reform, and then was universalized throughout the country through policy promotion. Finally, the system was established by law.

In September 1980, the CPC Central Committee issued a circular entitled "several issues on further strengthening and perfecting the responsibility system of Agricultural production", which was restricted by the institutional environment and ideology at that time. At the same time, it can only emphasize that "collective economy is the unshakable foundation for China's agricultural modernization". At the same time, it is required that "we should proceed from the actual needs and actual conditions. Multiple forms of operation, multiple labor organizations and multiple methods of remuneration are allowed to exist at the same time. " Differential treatment can only be made for the delivery of output to households (including work to households), which is mainly limited to the long-term production teams in remote mountainous areas and poor and backward areas that "eat grain by resale, production depends on loans, and livelihood depends on relief" and that the masses have lost confidence in the collective.

By 1982, policy makers were more determined to carry out reforms, and document No. 1 of this year was devoted to the issue of agricultural production responsibility system. This document stresses that "China's agriculture must adhere to the road of socialist collectivization, and the public ownership of land and other basic means of production will remain unchanged for a long time." at the same time, it clearly points out that "the collective economy should establish a production responsibility system that will remain unchanged for a long time." It clearly affirms that the mode of household operation and self-financing and self-financing is based on the public ownership of land. Farmers and collectives maintain a contractual relationship, which is different from the small private individual economy before the cooperative transformation, and is an integral part of the socialist agricultural economy. This paper theoretically demonstrates the relationship between agricultural production responsibility system and mainstream ideology, and eliminates the hindrance of ideology to the reform of family responsibility system.

In 1983, the CPC Central Committee issued "some problems of the current Rural Economic Policy", which comprehensively demonstrated the rationality of the contract responsibility system based on output: "it takes farmers or groups as contracting units, expands farmers' autonomy and gives full play to the advantages of small-scale operation. It not only overcomes the disadvantages of over-centralized management, labor 'great prosperity' and egalitarianism, but also inherits the positive achievements of previous cooperation. We have adhered to the public ownership of land and other basic means of production and some functions of unified management, so that the productive forces newly formed over the years can play a better role. This mode of operation, which combines decentralized management with unified management, has a wide range of adaptability. it can not only adapt to the current situation of manual labor and the characteristics of agricultural production, but also meet the needs of the development of productive forces in the process of agricultural modernization. In this mode of operation, household management contracted by households is only a management level in the cooperative economy, and it is a new type of family economy. It is essentially different from the individual economy of small private ownership in the past and should not be confused. " Since then, the debate among decision-makers on the basic system in rural areas has come to an end, and the household contract system has become universal throughout the country. By the end of 1984, 99 percent of the production teams and 96.6 percent of the farmers in the country had contracted work to the households.

two。 The formation of the right system of household contract system

With the establishment of the household contract system of agricultural land, the policy guidance in the rural system is mainly committed to making the right of contracted management of agricultural land real right, long-term, legalized and institutionalized.

First, the period of land contract should be continuously extended to stabilize the relationship between farmers and land. The No. 1 document of the Central Rural work in 1984 proposed to extend the land contract period, encourage farmers to increase investment, cultivate soil fertility, and carry out intensive management. Generally speaking, the term of land contract should be more than 15 years. " During the second round of contracting in the early and mid-1990s, the term of land contracting was extended to 30 years. In 2008, the third Plenary session of the 17th CPC Central Committee proposed to "stabilize the relationship between existing land and contracting and keep it unchanged for a long time".

The second is to establish the household contract system as the basic economic system in rural areas of our country. In 1991, the decision of the CPC Central Committee on further strengthening Agricultural and Rural work put forward for the first time the two-tier management system of household contract-based responsibility system and the combination of unification and separation. As a basic system of rural collective economic organizations in China, it has been stabilized for a long time and continuously enriched and perfected. " In 1993, the CPC Central Committee and the State Council further emphasized some policies and measures on current agricultural and rural economic development, which were further emphasized at the third Plenary session of the 15th CPC Central Committee in 1998. The 1999 Constitution clearly states that "rural collective economic organizations implement a two-tier management system based on household contract management and the combination of unification and division." In 2002, the Rural Land contract Law clearly put forward that "the state implements the rural land contract management system". In 2003, the third Plenary session of the 16th CPC Central Committee strengthened this expression: "Household contract management of land is the core of the basic management system in rural areas." According to the property Law in 2007, "Rural collective economic organizations implement a two-tier management system based on household contract management and the combination of unification and division." The cultivated land, woodland, grassland and other land used for agriculture collectively owned by farmers and owned by the state shall be subject to the land contract management system in accordance with the law. "

When this system has been constantly questioned in recent years, the third Plenary session of the 17th CPC Central Committee in 2008 gave a very clear and full affirmation of the status and role of this system: "the two-tier management system based on household contract management and the combination of unification and division." it is a basic rural management system that adapts to the socialist market economic system and conforms to the characteristics of agricultural production, and is the cornerstone of the Party's rural policy. We must stick to it unswervingly. "