Don't let the rural collective assets become a "family feast" for a small number of people.

Due to the unclear property rights and unclear ownership of interests, there are many problems in the actual operation of the collective economy. Only when farmers have clear property rights protection and stable property rights benefits, can the moderate scale operation of land, the growth of new operators and the transfer of more farmers to cities needed for agricultural modernization be carried out smoothly.

General Secretary Xi Jinping recently pointed out at the fifth meeting of the Central leading Group for comprehensively deepening Reform that the goal of actively developing farmers' joint-stock cooperation and granting collective assets shareholding rights to the pilot reform is to explore giving farmers more property rights. This important speech further clarified the major policies of comprehensively deepening rural reform since the third Plenary session of the 18th CPC Central Committee, and further refined the pilot project of realizing the form of rural collective ownership reform, which is currently being actively explored in various localities, focusing on the reform of joint-stock rights of collective assets.

The reform of joint-stock rights of collective assets is an important part of comprehensively deepening rural reform. Under this background, it has two basic essentials: first, the purpose of reform is to protect the rights of members of farmers' collective economic organizations and to give farmers more property rights. No matter which form of power is adopted, farmers' property rights and interests cannot be reduced or even disappeared. Second, the reform is to establish a new mechanism for the operation of the rural collective economy that meets the requirements of the market economy, so that the collective economy can develop and grow. An accurate grasp of these two points can ensure that the reform of shareholding rights of rural collective assets can be promoted on the right track.

In China, rural collective assets mainly include two parts, one is resource assets, such as land, woodland, grassland, water surface, etc., and the other is operating assets, such as facade, factories, business organizations that buy shares in the name of the collective. Since the reform and opening up, the management form of household contract management has been gradually implemented for resource assets; for operational assets, various forms of operation have emerged in practice, some of which are mainly village collective management and some are leasing operation. On the whole, collective assets have been developed and strengthened in operation, and farmers' rights and interests have been protected.

However, due to the unclear property rights and unclear ownership of interests, there are many problems in the actual operation of the collective economy. Some rural collective organizations contract and recover the collective land at will, and the operating assets of some rural collective organizations are leased to whom and at what price. Farmers, as members of the village collective, seldom have the right to speak and know. Especially with the expansion of all kinds of land expropriation and enclosure in recent years, a small number of rural collective leaders regard collective assets as a "family banquet" for individuals to accumulate wealth, and embezzlement belongs to the interests of village collective farmers. Recently, "huge corruption in the countryside" and "great corruption among village officials" that have been frequently exposed by the media are mostly related to the unclear property rights of this kind of collective assets. This requires us to really clarify the property rights and improve the functions and powers of the rural collective assets.

At the same time, with the development and change of the agricultural situation in our country, the practical problem of who will farm and how to farm is more urgent, and the emergence of new professional farmers, family farms and more professional families, we need to step up our efforts to explore the effective realization form of "separation of three rights" of rural land ownership, contract right and management right. Only when farmers have clear property rights protection and stable property rights benefits, the moderate scale operation of land, the growth of new operators and the transfer of more farmers to cities needed for agricultural modernization with Chinese characteristics can be carried out smoothly. In this case, a clear division of the share power of collective assets can no longer be delayed.

Judging from the practice over the years, there are various forms of exploring the reform of shareholding rights of collective assets in rural areas. In some economically developed areas, the scale of assets is large, the proportion of agriculture is small, and the benefit of land output is relatively higher, so the reform of joint-stock cooperative system of collective assets, including land, has become a common choice. In some areas where the level of economic development is not high, rural collective organizations have few assets other than resource assets, such as land contracted to households, and some of these areas explore farmers' joint-stock cooperation, such as land share cooperation, professional cooperation, and so on. Some encourage the transfer of various forms of land management rights. No matter which form, it embodies a common feature, that is, the determination of rights: either demutualization of collective assets, or clarity of contracted land, or certainty of rights, or certainty of shares.

This kind of exploration is in the right direction and the path is correct. The situation in China's rural areas is very different, and there must be different requirements for the realization of collective ownership. However, no matter which form, an important premise is to protect the rights of members of farmers' collective economic organizations, not to misappropriate farmers' interests, let alone let rural collective assets become a "family feast" for a small number of people.