NADS Center for Labor Market Research Held "Rural Land System Reform and Healthy Urbanization" Seminar

China's economic reforms began in the rural land system, and continued the household contract responsibility system and land collective ownership in the form of scattered contracting of small-scale farmers' economy for many years. At present, the land system has become one of the most important factors affecting the thorough citizenization of farmers as the population continues to flow into the city. Although the state encourages the transfer of agricultural land, it has not fundamentally changed the rural land system, and long-term problems still exist. At present, some regions have carried out various reform attempts and have obtained comparable experience, which is worth summarizing. Next, is the rural land system a shareholding, publicization or still continuing the current practice? Or is there any other better way to deal with it? What is the impact on the rational flow of labor? To answer this question, the Labor Market Research Center invited experts in relevant fields and government officials to discuss the pros and cons of various programs.

Professor Zhao Zhong, Director of the Labor Market Research Center and Associate Dean of the School of Labor and Human Resources, presided over the meeting. Professor Liu Shouying from the School of Economics, Professor Yu Xiaohua from the University of Göttingen, Germany, Professor Song Zhihong from the Law School of the Chinese Academy of Governance, Researcher Liu Jinwei, Director of the Mobile Population Center of the National Health Planning Commission, and Professor Sun Wenkai from the School of Economics. These experts and scholars reported on topics related to the land system that they studied in depth.

Professor Liu Shouying expounded the core issues and trends of China's rural land system reform, and introduced several typical pilot reform regional experiences. The key of rural land system reform is the division and change of collective land rights. For more than 60 years, from the land reform to collectivization, to the production of households, to the current separation of powers, the policy of building land rights under collective ownership has been swaying, without main guiding lines. The direction of the collective ownership rights arrangement is to transfer the income from the use of property rights of farmers' land to be more stable as much as we can, which is facing big challenges. At present, some pilot areas show that the trend of arrangements returning to collectivization is obvious, including Tangyue Guizhou, Nanhai Guangdong, Songjiang Shanghai, and Chongzhou Chendu. Realizing collective ownership and operational rights is the commonality of these pilot areas.

Professor Yu Xiaohua explained the possible problems of land system reform from international experience and domestic field research. At present, many young people in rural areas of China have not been allocated contracted land nor unemployment insurance, lacking social security. Land ownership is a combination of people and land, requires policy adjustment constantly. In African,  all of land basically is owned by the state. When it is distributed to villages, village head or the elder is responsible for distributing. Sometimes half a village is gone because of plague, so it is necessary to quickly adjust the ownership of the land. This change in ownership does not consider the initial property rights. The World Bank and the European Union in the 1980s believed that unclear property rights would lead to inefficient agricultural production of land. In the 1980s, the United States and the European Union’s overseas aid agencies issued invitations to Africa, and the EU aid funds and the United States assumed the money to determine the rights. However, it is found that there were still a lot of difficulties in the process of land rights determination and received firm opposition from local farmers. In the end, they had to respect the customary practices of local farmers. Similarly, land ownership in Russia after privatization has brought many problems. The study in Shunping County of Hebei Province found that there is a contradiction between fairness and efficiency stability in rural land adjustment. Land is still the last guarantee of farmers, and the distribution may cause a lot of dissatisfaction in society in the future.

Professor Song Zhihong summarized the experience of homestead reform in the pilot areas. There is a common place in the reform process between the homestead and the contracted land. The central government proposes the separation of powers, but there are many differences between the two. As of now, there is still a lot of controversy about the understanding of the separation of powers in the theoretical and practical circles, especially in the economics and legal circles. Professor Song specifically addresses several issues on the separation of the three powers of the homestead: First, why should we implement the separation of the three powers of the homestead? What is the central government doing when it proposes this policy? At present, the goal of the separation of the three powers of the homestead is to revitalize the homestead and the farmhouse, and to ensure the ownership remains unchanged. Under this premise, the farmer’s basic right to reside and its property rights must be guaranteed. Second, What are ways we now have to revitalize existing homesteads and farmhouses? There are certain problems with paid exit and forced free exit. Operationally, rental is a feasible way. Third, how to revitalize the new homestead? In order to revitalize the farmer's homestead, it is necessary to allow the social subjects without identity restrictions to participate in the use of the homestead, which is not only available to farmers. Among the 33 pilots, Yiwu, Dali, Deqing and other places have different rental models, each with its merits.

According to the data of the migrant population survey, the Director of the National Health and Family Planning Commission, Liu Jinwei, found that the willingness of migrants to settle in the urban areas is declining. In particular, the migrant population with land contracting rights is unwilling to drop their hukou into the city. Using quantitative analysis techniques, it is found that migrant workers who have contracted land in their hometowns are less willing to move their households to cities than migrant workers who do not have contracted land. Migrant workers who have homesteads in their hometowns are more reluctant to move their households to the cities; the negative impact of land on the willingness of migrant workers to settle down is reflected in the cross-city mobility, the older generation, the flow time of more than five years, the first time with the spouse, low income groups in the second industry and the group not participating in urban medical insurance.

Professor Sun Wenkai first pointed out that the agricultural output value of GDP is less than 10 percent, while the non-agricultural income of farmers dominated, which means that the rural land system reform will not be too large even if it has potential risks. How to achieve fairness and efficiency is the main goal of land reform. Under the premise that the three bottom lines, that is, keeping the nature of land public ownership, the red line of cultivated land and the rights of farmers, at least three reform options are worth considering: the first is to extend contracting to be similar to permanent contracting, and the premise must be fair. It is not reasonable to extend on the basis of two rounds of contracting because a large number of new populations have no land and do not need the cultivated people to continue to contract land without compensation. The collective membership rights should be redefined and then re-allocated for permanent contracting. The second is to nationalize the arable land and cancel the collective ownership of the land. This can solve the dual system of land and eliminate farmers' concerns about entering the city. At the same time, state-owned cultivated land needs to be combined with real paid contracting to achieve the most efficient use. The third option is the shareholding. At present, the shareholding of many pilot areas has achieved good results, which is equivalent to realize collective ownership, and can further compare and summarize experiences and promote them.

Participants asked questions and discussed questions related to the issue.