The Direction of Land Reform should be more clear about the Reform of Homestead system

According to reports, the "opinions on Rural Land expropriation, the entry of Collective Construction Land into the Market, and the pilot work of Homestead system Reform" have recently been jointly issued by the General Office of the CPC Central Committee and the General Office of the State Council. The reform of the rural land system is about to enter the pilot stage. The pilot project will be arranged mainly in the comprehensive pilot of new urbanization and the pilot area of rural reform, which will operate in a closed manner to ensure that the risk can be controlled. The pilot work will be completed by the end of 2017.

The reform of rural land system has always been one of the most important and sensitive themes of China's reform. It is a typical "hard bone" after the reform has entered the deep water area. After the third Plenary session of the 18th CPC Central Committee put forward the key points of land reform, such as "establishing a unified construction land market in urban and rural areas", "adhering to the collective ownership of rural land, safeguarding farmers' land contractual management rights in accordance with the law, developing and strengthening the collective economy", "stabilizing rural land contracting relations and keeping them unchanged for a long time", and "safeguarding the rights and interests of farmers' factors of production", the pilot project of mortgage guarantee for the right of contracted management of agricultural land has been carried out in many lands since 2014.

As for the main task of the pilot reform, Minister of Land Jiang Daming said in an interview with Xinhua that the first is to improve the land expropriation system. The second is to establish the system of entering the market of rural collective construction land. The third is to reform and improve the rural homestead system. The fourth is to establish a land value-added income distribution mechanism that takes into account the state, collectives and individuals, and reasonably improve individual income.

Previously, there has been a lot of controversy about land reform. The debate between Watson and Zhou Qiren on the reform of the land system in 2014 is the epitome of this fierce debate. The reform of the land system is typically easier said than done. In the future, we must prevent the correct direction of reform from being obstructed by vested interests.

Recently, a reporter from time Weekly interviewed long Denggao, a professor at the Institute of Economics of Tsinghua University, on some hot topics of land reform. Not long ago, Professor long's major national social science fund project, "History of the Reform of China's Land system," was invited to submit an achievement report to the central government and was commended.

The confirmation of the right of land makes it the property of farmers.

Time Weekly: in the decision of the third Plenary session of the 18th CPC Central Committee, the content of the next step of land system reform was put forward. This year's Central Committee document No. 1 clearly stated that it is necessary to stabilize the right to contract and activate the right of management. The opinions on guiding the orderly transfer of the right of management of rural land and the development of appropriate scale operation of agriculture issued on November 20, 2014 clearly put forward the separation of ownership, the right of contract and the right of management It takes 5 years to complete the certificate of confirmation of the transfer of rights. We finally see a more systematic expression about the land rights in the future. Why is there such a design?

Long Denggao: for a long time, the contracted management right of farmers is a kind of right of use, not property right. For urbanites, the house property certificate is their property, but for farmers, the most important land cannot become their property; now we say that the land is collectively owned, and collective ownership should also be a kind of property rights. but this kind of property right has not been realized, for example, neither the individual nor the collective of farmers can take the land to the bank for a mortgage. On the other hand, under the existing land system, land transfer is greatly restricted, which greatly limits the efficiency of land output, so that land is a dead natural resource, but not a living factor of production.

Therefore, the current reform is inevitable and what we have been promoting. I am now undertaking a major project of the National Social Science Fund, "History of Land system Reform in China". I have been invited to submit an achievement report to the Central Committee and received commendation on the enlightenment of land rights to today's land system reform.

Land right is a kind of land system in history. History is not far away, that is, before 1949. As long as the farmers with land rights pay a certain land rent to the landowners with land rights, they can freely control and trade the land, including not only rental rights, but also mortgage rights. Land rights are a kind of property rights. Compared with the current contractual management rights, land rights are also a kind of property rights, and land rights and land rights do not conflict with each other. This is a kind of institutional heritage formed in the Ming and Qing dynasties, and it was not common before 1949. The right of contract should be a kind of land right of real right.

Time Weekly: the "opinion" issued not long ago proposes to complete the determination of land rights in five years, combined with the actual situation in China's rural areas, how to understand the practical significance of land rights determination?

Long Denggao: now the right is still limited, the right is not aimed at ownership, but it is not the right to use it in the past. In any case, it can give farmers a certificate of real right to land, just as urban residents have a certificate of house property. Now the contract right and the management right are separated, the contract right and the management right can be the real right, no longer just the right of use, the original right of use can only be used for self-cultivation or lease. In this way, farmers can use land warrants to mortgage loans, and there is a stronger institutional guarantee for land circulation, which provides space for private reform.

At present, the circulation of land is greatly restricted. According to the original regulations, it can only be transferred within villages and townships, and even to people outside, more than 2/3 of the collective people need to vote for it. With warrants, it is no longer subject to the constraints of collective ownership, farmers can freely control, can use a variety of transaction forms. In addition to tenancy, you can mortgage loans and pawn them. For example, if farmers want to go to the city for five or ten years, they can realize the income of the next five or ten years at once, and whether they are working or doing business, they will have a sum of money.

De facto private property rights have already emerged in many places. Many years ago, people began to increase their land without increasing the number of people, and without reducing the number of people. Isn't this actually private ownership?. Because people found that the original assumption of equal distribution of land in reality is very troublesome, full of problems. For example, some places are redivided every 5 or 10 years, and the land is more and more fragmented. We have investigated that seven mu of land for a family of six are distributed in 12 places. The ownership of rural land has lost its meaning, whether it is divided equally on a regular basis or no longer fixed, it can not guarantee the good wish of equal distribution of land.

In comparison, what is better is the market-oriented system, which is based on that everyone has their own property and can choose and make decisions in accordance with the law.

The reform of homestead system can be expected.

Time Weekly: according to media reports, the "opinions on Rural Land expropriation, the entry of Collective Construction Land into the Market, and the pilot work of Homestead system Reform" have recently been jointly issued by the General Office of the CPC Central Committee and the General Office of the State Council. The reform of the rural land system is about to enter the pilot stage. The pilot project will be arranged mainly in the comprehensive pilot of new urbanization and the pilot area of rural reform, which will operate in a closed manner to ensure that the risk can be controlled. The pilot work will be completed by the end of 2017.

The media have noticed that in terms of homestead, there has been a breakthrough in the reform, which can be transferred within the collective, how to evaluate the significance of this reform?

Long Denggao: allowing homestead to circulate within the collective is a breakthrough. But the role and impact may be limited. The designers of this system should have a clearer understanding that only property is safe in liquidity and assets and future income can be realized through transactions.

The reform of the land expropriation system involves the interests of governments at all levels, and there will be great resistance, and the biggest resistance comes from local governments, which must be promoted by all kinds of forces.

Time Weekly: when it comes to land transfer, it has also been suggested that the short-range circulation of agricultural land can already meet the needs of circulation. If the scope is expanded and a large land market is formed, it will bring land concentration.

Long Denggao: first of all, for farmers, from the basic principles of supply and demand, if there are more objects to choose from and more forms of transactions to consider, the price can be higher and more beneficial to farmers. The wider the scope of land transfer, the better, the more transaction means, the more favorable, and the stronger the liquidity, the better. What's more, now that many villages and one village labor force have all gone out, to whom do they rent it?

As for land concentration, first of all, scale is a trend, only centralization can give full play to scale effect, and secondly, urbanization is another irresistible trend, the number of farmers is bound to decrease, and the process of urbanization is the process of farmers becoming citizens. There must be a considerable number of farmers leaving the land. As a matter of fact, 15 million farmers go to cities every year to become citizens.

Any system should be considered from the general trend, the large-scale operation of land and the reduction of the number of farmers are all major trends. The worry about land concentration is a misunderstanding in history, which holds that free land trading leads to land concentration, annexation, bankruptcy and exile of farmers, and then social unrest. But in fact, first, the land merger and concentration in Chinese history has been seriously exaggerated. The new research results show that the Gini coefficient of land possession is within a reasonable range, if the land right, permanent tenancy right, clan land and other forms are taken into account. Gini coefficient is lower. Second, in fact, individual small-scale farmers have always been dominant in history, because individual small-scale farmers have their competitiveness, thus countering the trend of land concentration, and other negative feedback mechanisms of land concentration are also restricting the concentration of land. such as the equal distribution system of sons and grandchildren, how can there be a general concentration of land?

Time Weekly: one worry now is that big capital makes farmers lose their land.

Long Denggao: as a matter of fact, agriculture needs capital. the current situation is that there is a lack of capital in rural areas, and farmers are unwilling to invest their own money in banks rather than their own land; banks invest their money in state-owned enterprises and will not invest in rural areas. and there is no channel for foreign or private capital to invest in land, so it is precisely the lack of capital flow to land. Land improvement, seed improvement, and the construction of water conservancy facilities all need capital, and the improvement of the mode of operation needs capital. Why Taiwan's agricultural development is good because of capital investment.

In addition, this is also because some intellectuals look down on farmers and look down upon them. in fact, farmers are not so short-sighted. For example, when you give them urban hukou, farmers may not be willing to give up their rural hukou. Farmers will also make rational choices. The key is that a system should not be aimed at individual phenomena, but should be set according to universal laws.

This is a typical view that regards oneself as the savior of farmers. In order to prevent individual farmers from going bankrupt, they should not be allowed to own their own land, but the government should take care of the land for the peasants. This is the thinking of the planned economy.

Time Weekly: it is reported that the pilot plan on actively developing the reform of farmers' shareholding rights in collective assets will also be released soon, with the core being to give farmers the six rights of possession, income, paid withdrawal, mortgage, guarantee, and inheritance of collective assets. It is generally understood that collective assets also include land, can it be understood that there can be another form of collective ownership of land in addition to the original household contract responsibility system?

Long Denggao: in the practice of reform at the grass-roots level, this form has long existed, such as the share-based land system in some places, such as some village farmers no longer farm land, lease the land to build factories, and then gain income. Shareholding system can also be regarded as a form of collective property rights, which has the integrity of overall property rights, on the other hand, it is composed of many shareholders by owning private shares, and everyone can control their own shares freely. Trading shares at the same time does not affect the integrity of the company's property rights.