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Small steps toward rural land reform

By Jack M. Balkin

On a rainy day in Guizhou Province last month, I followed a group of local officials off a rural road into what looked like a carefully tended field of mud. Holding a bullhorn and with an umbrella-toting aid running after him, one official pointed to a twig poking out of the ground and started extolling the many virtues of blueberries. The berry-producing future of that field was hard to imagine at the time, but the official promised the twig heralded coming prosperity in the new socialist countryside.

To explain his optimism, the blueberry farm is the creation of two Japanese companies who are leasing the land from local residents. The companies pay local farmers monthly rent and have promised a share of the profits when the plants start producing. The blueberries are a sign of the times.

This is an arrangement that China?s government has recently put its weight behind with a series of reforms that encourage the leasing of rural land-use rights and the development of larger agricultural blocks. This will increase efficiency in food production, government officials have pledged, and give individual farmers more freedom.

This is not to say that rural land can be privately owned, and experts have pointed out that the transfer of land-use rights is actually nothing new. According to Yu Jianrong, the director of the Rural Development Institute?s Social Issues Research Center at the China Academy of Social Sciences, the reforms are largely symbolic, affirming that farmers can legally transfer the rights to their land. (An English translation of a recent interview is here, thanks to Danwei.)

These rights are currently allocated to farmers through 30-year leases. Ownership of the land is still considered collective and it remains unclear who, ultimately, is responsible for managing the collective land. In the past, this has helped to pave the way for land grabs by local officials?a popular source of unrest in China?s rural areas. While they take many forms, land grabs often involve local officials seizing and reselling land, giving little or no compensation to individual farmers. In a recent case of unrest, railroad workers clashed with farmers protesting the low compensation they had received to make way for a new rail line. Railroad officials complained that they need the cheap land to continue laying new tracks.

Rural reform is further complicated by China?s determination to remain self-sufficient when it comes to food production. Farmers cannot legally use their land for other uses than agriculture, a policy that has caused trouble in areas located just outside of large cities?there is more money in illegally selling property to developers than in maintaining a subsistence farm. The willingness of local officials to implement reform measures is also impacted by a government quota system for grain. Officials in fertile areas are likely more open to experimenting with reform. Provinces with difficulties producing enough rice and wheat are more likely to reserve land for grain production.

Efforts have been made in the past to cement the rights of individual farmers, but to limited effect. China?s 1998 Land Management Law called for contracts providing 30-year land leases to individual farmers that would limit the ability of local government to readjust the land use. A year later, however, studies found that less than half of China?s farmers had been issued contracts, and that many of those contracts did not protect against the readjustment of land use.

As part of the coming reforms, a market will be set up for the trading and transferring of land-use rights. All land-use transfers are required to be voluntary and exchanged at reasonable prices. These measures, however, may not be able to guard against the kinds of abuses of power that have happened in the past. Court systems in rural areas are generally weak and leases secured on a handshake.

It may be the case that as foreign investment and money move into the countryside, the court system will improve. But until those improvements are made and until reforms address the issue of government land requisitions, China?s troublesome land grabs will continue.

Full post as published by Balkinization on November 12, 2008 (boomark / email).