Rural Land Reform, Peasants' Rights and the Collective Economy: Three Major Issues in China Agricultural Development

The fact of continuous steady agricultural growth for more than three decades in China shows that, the collective ownership of rural land has flexibility and inclusiveness, its ambiguous negative impact is limited. The constantly improved realization form of collective ownership of rural land facilitates land exchange, transfer and consolidation. The rural land property right reform aims to further improve the property right structure of collective land ownership, the most appropriate method is to manifest the implicit land equity. Stocklization of rural land is helpful to solve the sidelining of agriculture and land fragmentation issues, could increase the flexibility of land occupation and transfer, the efficiency of land utilization and the competitiveness of agriculture. Stock ownership of rural land has strong stability, may be defined by warrants. Management right of rural land is flexible, may be divided and merged, and should be defined by contracts. Rural land transfer is the rational choice of peasants and the result of market allocation of resources, government should not intervene. Government should substitute land planning management system for land acquisition system, bring the decisive role of market allocation of resources into play by establishing an open, competitive, unified and orderly land market. Innovate realization forms for the usufructuary right of peasant house sites and peasant housing property right, set the bottom line for transfer of housing property right, guarantee housing security of the peasants. Rural land transaction system serves some collective economic organizations and peasants, yet rural land protection and management system serves all collective economic organizations and peasant households, so rural land protection and management system should be designed with priority.