There is an urgent need to solve four major problems in the reform of land system

The current land management system is at the expense of harming the rights and interests of collective land holders to achieve the goals of cultivated land protection, maintenance and appreciation of state-owned land assets, urbanization and so on. However, this "strict" management model does not achieve the set goals, but endangers national stability and social harmony. In order to embark on the road of benign development, China's land management must reform the relevant system on the basis of respecting the socialist market economy, under the guidance of the protection of rights and on the basis of the principle of proportionality.

I. further clarify the property rights of state-owned land and collective land

For collective land, the original appearance of collective land ownership should be restored according to the theory of "shareholding" and "joint-stock cooperation". It is suggested that the standing Committee of the National people's Congress should, in accordance with the principle of "co-ownership by shares", make a legislative interpretation of Article 59 of the property Law that "immovable property and movable property collectively owned by farmers are collectively owned by their own collective members". Or the Supreme people's Court may interpret it through a guiding case or judicial reply.

In the process of the reform of the land system in the middle of the last century, the "high-level cooperative" characterized by "sharing by share" was established through the "Model articles of Association of Advanced Agricultural producers' Cooperatives" promulgated by the third session of the first National people's Congress, while the "abstract collective land ownership" established during the period of the people's commune and continued to this day was established only through inner-party documents. Practice has proved that this system arrangement has many drawbacks, so it is necessary to rebuild the land joint-stock cooperative economy based on "share-by-share".

In fact, some places in China (such as Dongguan, Zhongshan, Shunde, Nanhai, Chengdu, etc.) have gained a lot of experience in this regard, and the Ministry of Land and Resources also said in 2011 that "encourage the reform of collective land shareholding system". However, the relevant systems and policies have not been issued in the past two years.

For state-owned land, it should first be made clear that all citizens represented by the National people's Congress shall enjoy the ownership of state-owned land. China's current Land Management Law only confirms that "the ownership of state-owned land shall be exercised by the State Council on behalf of the state", but it does not confirm the subject of state-owned land ownership. The defect in the design of this system is that the ownership of state-owned land is entrusted to the State Council, but no relevant mechanism is designed to ensure that the latter is accountable and reports to the real land owner and his agent (the National people's Congress). Second, the National people's Congress may authorize the State Council or set up an independent body directly subordinate to the National people's Congress to exercise the ownership of national land.

If the National people's Congress continues to authorize the State Council to exercise the state's land ownership, it should distinguish between the state's ownership of state-owned land and the state's right to manage land within the territory, the former is a right in the sense of private law (right), and the latter is a power in the sense of public law (power). For this reason, it is suggested that the State Council should separate the specific functions of state-owned land ownership from the land and resources management department and authorize the state-owned assets supervision and management department or establish a special organization to be responsible for it. The land and resources management department is responsible for the management of all land within the territory of our country on behalf of the central government. In terms of organizational and functional relations, the two institutions are independent, cooperate and supervise each other.

II. Realizing the equality of legal status between collective land and state-owned land

Article 6 of the current Constitution declares that ownership by the whole people and collective ownership by the working people are both important parts of socialist public ownership, while Article 10 establishes two kinds of land ownership: state ownership and collective ownership. According to the principle of equal ownership, the legal status of these two kinds of land ownership should be equal, and the legal status of the relevant land right holders should also be equal. The state should not deprive the collective land holders of their rights only based on the need for the protection of cultivated land.

For this reason, we should not only dispel the myth that "industrial and commercial construction can only be carried out on state-owned land", but also amend Article 43 of the current Land Management Law as soon as possible, "if any unit or individual needs to use land for construction," must apply for the use of state-owned land in accordance with the law, but also give the collective land use right holder the same power as the state-owned land use right holder, that is, whether it is collective construction land. Or collective agricultural land, the right holders of collective land also enjoy the rights of possession, use, income and subcontract, lease, exchange, transfer, shareholding, guarantee, mortgage and so on. The future reform of land management system should focus on breaking the urban-rural dual land management structure, taking the needs of land location, use and socio-economic development rather than the nature of land ownership as the basis of land management.