Understanding the Innovation of Land contract system in China

At present, China's land contract system reform is moving forward, land contract management rights registration, long-term unchanged, circulation, scale management, industrial and commercial capital into agriculture and so on, much attention from society and academia. Scholars from all sides have different opinions on the future direction of the land contract system. Some of them are stable small-scale peasant economy, some are anti-rent and reverse contracting, some are family farm management, some are cooperative management, some are company enterprise management, and so on. How to treat these problems, the author thinks, it is necessary to jump out of these specific problems, from a macro perspective to look at the status and role of land contract system.

First of all, the innovation of rural land contract system should be viewed from the perspective of establishing market economy system. What is a market economy, contract also. Clearly defined property rights, free flow of elements, and contracts protected by the state are all indispensable. Back to the countryside, the rural market is divided into product market and factor market. The agricultural product market has been fully liberalized since 2004. It can be said that a unified, open and orderly market system has been basically established, while the rural factor market is extremely imperfect, especially land. In recent years, the flow of rural labor force and capital has been gradually liberalized. Why can't the agricultural land market work? In the final analysis, ownership is not owned by farmers, but by collectives. This collective can be villagers 'groups or village committees, while farmers only have the right to contract management. In this case, the problem comes. Ownership is not farmers '. How can it be effectively protected? The state is actually thinking about recruiting. In 1993, it issued "unchanged for 30 years". In 2003, the Land Contract Law continued to emphasize "unchanged for 30 years". In 2008, it issued "stable and long-term unchanged land contract management rights". The Property Law simply classified land contract management rights as usufructuary rights to give real right protection. Document No.1 of the Central Committee in 2013 also requires the registration of contracted land rights throughout the country. These laws, regulations and policies are clearly defined property rights as we talked about earlier. To put it bluntly, they are to establish a quasi-private property right of rural land. In addition to these, the state also encourages land circulation, and the Third Plenary Session of the 18th CPC Central Committee also proposes that the right to contracted management of land can be mortgaged and invested, all of which belong to the category of promoting the free flow of factors. In addition, Document No.1 of the Central Committee in 2014 also proposed the separation of three rights, namely, the separation of ownership, contracting right and management right, which is a very clear policy signal, that is, the state should strengthen the protection of management right, because there was no such right expression before, that is, to strengthen the protection of industrial and commercial capital, bosses, large households, family farms and other land inflow subjects, so that they have confidence in long-term stable investment, which belongs to strengthening the protection of contracts. From the perspective of establishing a market economy system, it is helpful for us to understand the concepts of registration, circulation, mortgage guarantee, shareholding and separation of three rights. This is the first aspect I talked about.

Secondly, the innovation of rural land contract system should be viewed from the perspective of two hundred years. The 18th National Congress of the Communist Party of China planned two hundred years, to build a well-off society in an all-round way by the 100th year of the founding of the People's Republic of China and to realize modernization by the 100th year of the founding of the People's Republic of China. This goal is ambitious, and certainly not easy. From the experience of all countries in the world, I am afraid there is only one way to achieve this grand goal, that is, the industrialization of agricultural countries proposed by Mr. Zhang Peigang. The Central Committee sees this problem very clearly. At the Fifth Plenary Session of the Seventeenth Central Committee, the Central Committee proposed that industrialization, urbanization and agricultural modernization should be promoted simultaneously, which is very correct. Why do we say this? To realize industrialization, we must solve two major problems: where does the labor force come from, where does the raw material come from, and where does the product go? It is obvious that labour must come from the countryside, i.e., to transfer to industry what Lewis calls an unlimited supply of rural labour; raw materials, agricultural products, as important raw materials for industry, must be available in sufficient quantities; For products, both rural and urban areas need to develop product markets. Of course, urban consumption capacity is stronger. This requires more people to be transferred to cities. Real estate and consumption can rise. If you understand this meaning, you can understand the current efforts to promote new urbanization and three hundred million people. Therefore, we can clearly see that the traditional small-scale peasant economy cannot support the rapid industrialization and urbanization, and agriculture must take the road of scale, intensification, specialization and marketization. Only in this way can the labor productivity be improved and more labor force be separated into cities; the commodity rate of agricultural products can be improved, thus providing protection for industrial raw materials and urban life; the rural population can be completely transferred, and urbanization and industrialization can have solid support. Now back to the main body, since the development direction of agriculture is to take the road of scale and intensification, then the land contract system must serve it, so there will be an all-round promotion of right registration and land circulation. I believe there will be a land withdrawal mechanism in the near future, and the land market will be further liberalized. Incidentally, some scholars are still staunch supporters of smallholder farming, arguing that land-scale farming can displace and render small farmers homeless. I think that this worry is a question of the speed of promoting large-scale agriculture and the adaptability of economic development, not a question of direction. Where will this strange theory lead China's modernization?

The market economy and industrialization are the two keys to understanding the land contract system, the agricultural management system and even the road to China's economic development. I believe this explanation is convincing.