The new rural land reform is about to enter the pilot stage, but the reform process will still be cautious

China's rural "new land reform" is about to enter the pilot stage, but the reform process will still be cautious.

The pilot reform of China's rural land system is about to begin, and the reform will focus on three major areas: "rural land, collective construction land and homestead", but industry insiders believe that the results of rural land reform in 2015 may be lower than many people expected.

China's rural land reform, which has a bearing on the vital interests of hundreds of millions of farmers and is regarded as a "hard bone", is accelerating, and the timetable for the pilot reform has been set. However, judging from a series of documents and the actual reform process, rural land reform in 2015 will still be pilot and prudent, and the central government is still cautious.

On January 12, the General Office of the CPC Central Committee and the General Office of the State Council jointly issued the opinions on Rural Land expropriation, the entry of Collective Construction Land into the Market, and the pilot work of Homestead system Reform (hereinafter referred to as "opinion"). It is clear that the pilot work of China's rural land system reform will be completed by the end of 2017, indicating that China's rural land system reform is about to enter the pilot stage. However, the pilot project will last for three years, and it is obvious that the central government is in no hurry to promote it.

As of the release of the interface news, the "opinion" has not been released to the public and is limited to being communicated between government departments. Jiang Daming, minister of land and resources and chief inspector of land, revealed in an interview with Xinhua on January 12 that the pilot project of this round of reform mainly has three major tasks, namely, to build a system for entering the market for collective construction land, to explore and narrow the scope of land expropriation, and to improve reasonable, standardized, and diversified security mechanisms for land-expropriated farmers.

Jiang Daming further interpreted that in this round of pilot reform of rural collective construction land into the market, it is necessary to explore and improve the land property rights system, give rural collective construction land transfer, leasing, and shareholding rights, clarify the scope and ways for rural collective construction land to enter the market, and establish and improve market trading rules and service supervision system. In the reform of the rural homestead system, it is necessary to improve the guarantee and acquisition of the rights and interests of the homestead, explore various forms of realization of farmers' housing security in different areas, and explore the implementation of paid use of the excessive occupation of homestead and multiple houses in one household, and explore the voluntary and paid withdrawal or transfer of homestead by farmers settled in cities within their collective economic organizations.

Now it seems that the pilot work of land reform has taken another step forward in key areas such as collective construction land and homestead. Zheng Fengtian, a professor at the School of Agriculture and Rural Development of Renmin University of China, who was interviewed by the Interface News, believes that in the past, it was stipulated that rural collective construction land can enter the market if it conforms to norms and use regulations. however, regulations and use controls need to be clearly defined for a specific piece of land. We also need to assess the risk of entering the market directly to avoid land financial problems and bring local debt risk.

Zheng Fengtian also analyzed that Jiang Daming's statement shows that the central government is still particularly cautious about rural homestead reform. He said: "the rural homestead reform still cannot arbitrarily cross the red line, limiting that farmers who settle in cities can only voluntarily withdraw or transfer homestead for a fee within their collective economic organizations. in fact, this was the case before the pilot project. The original information disclosed is only that urbanites are not allowed to buy homestead in rural areas, and the information now is basically the same as in the past. "

Zheng Fengtian believes that the focus of this round of homestead reform is to charge a certain fee appropriately for farmers who exceed the standard occupation of homestead and more than one house.

At present, Chinese rural residents generally have a homestead in their homes, but now nearly 300 million people go to work in cities. Zheng Toyota believes that with the rapid development of urbanization in the future, how to deal with the plight of urban farmers who "live in rat nests in cities and let rats live in rural houses" needs to be reformed on rural homestead.

Jiang Daming revealed in an interview with Xinhua that the requirements of the pilot reform are, first, to adhere to small-scale pilot projects. Overall planning the eastern, central, western and northeast regions, taking into account different stages and models of development, mainly in the new urbanization integrated pilot and rural reform pilot areas, select a number of basic and conditional counties or county-level cities to carry out. Second, adhere to the reform in accordance with the law, and the pilot project involves breaking through the relevant legal provisions, which needs to be submitted by the State Council to the standing Committee of the National people's Congress for authorization to allow the pilot areas to suspend the implementation of relevant legal provisions during the pilot period. The third is to persist in closed operation. The pilot project is strictly restricted to counties (cities) authorized by law, and non-pilot areas should not blindly compare with others and act without authorization to ensure that the pilot project is closed and the risk can be controlled.

"the reform affects the whole body at one point, so a larger pilot project is needed." Zheng Toyota believes that in order to firmly grasp the situation of the pilot reform, the central government has adopted a closed operation in order to control risks. As the revised version of the Land Management Law has not yet been issued, there are still many risks in the process of rural land reform pilot work.

The latest report released by Anbang Consulting on January 13 also believes that the lack of consensus and misgivings have made the land reform cautious and conservative. Anbang believes that the achievements of land reform in 2014 are still limited to basic areas such as registration and certification of confirmed rights. Although many places are experimenting with the feasible model of land reform, it is still too early to form a mature model that is universal throughout the country. On the other hand, the operation of the policy for the transfer of rural homestead and collective construction land is difficult and slow. The results of rural land reform in 2015 are likely to be lower than many expected.

Song Hongyuan, director of the Rural Economic Research Center of the Ministry of Agriculture, said in an interview with Interface News: "the decision of the third Plenary session of the 18th CPC Central Committee and document No. 1 of 2014 have clearly proposed to reform the homestead management system, improve homestead management policy and housing mortgage guarantee. Minister Jiang Daming's interpretation is not complete, and we need to wait for the formal release of the complete document to see if there are any detailed pilot opinions."