???? ?? ??? ?? ???? ?? - ??????? ??(��ת) ??? ??? ???? (Rural Land Tenure System Reform in Post-Reform China - On the Institution of Market-Led Transfer of Land Use Rights)

This article examines the process and characteristics of China��s post-1978 rural land tenure system reform in which the transfer of land-use rights has been institutionalized as a key mechanism to deal with the problems inherent to the household responsibility system (HRS). The HRS, albeit its remarkable contribution to the amelioration of rural poverty in its early stage, has exposed its side effects including the fragmentation of agricultural land plot and consequent degradation of agricultural productivity. A variety of alternative reformist models have since implemented, including farm-management model, stock-based cooperative model, and joint-contract farming model, all of which are intended to purse the economy of scale in land management based on specific local conditions. The policy line of the Party-State has accordingly centered on striking a balance between the centralization of agricultural land onto the hands of fewer numbers of farmers or farming cooperatives and the protection of the peasants�� land rights and subsistence while maintaining the land ownership of the rural collectives. A series of rural land policy measures since the late 1980s, including the recent 2006 agricultural reform measures and the 2007 implementation of the Property Rights Law, clearly demonstrate the Party-State has employed the market-led transfer of land use rights as the pivotal institutional mechanism to meet both ends. Subsequently, the market of the land use rights has expanded diversifying its ways of land rights transfer. Nevertheless, Chinese rural society still faces some socio-political problems particularly involving the local governance relationship in which the differing socio-economic interests of local governments, rural collectives and peasants intersect each other.

This article examines the process and characteristics of China��s post-1978 rural land tenure system reform in which the transfer of land-use rights has been institutionalized as a key mechanism to deal with the problems inherent to the household responsibility system (HRS). The HRS, albeit its remarkable contribution to the amelioration of rural poverty in its early stage, has exposed its side effects including the fragmentation of agricultural land plot and consequent degradation of agricultural productivity. A variety of alternative reformist models have since implemented, including farm-management model, stock-based cooperative model, and joint-contract farming model, all of which are intended to purse the economy of scale in land management based on specific local conditions. The policy line of the Party-State has accordingly centered on striking a balance between the centralization of agricultural land onto the hands of fewer numbers of farmers or farming cooperatives and the protection of the peasants�� land rights and subsistence while maintaining the land ownership of the rural collectives. A series of rural land policy measures since the late 1980s, including the recent 2006 agricultural reform measures and the 2007 implementation of the Property Rights Law, clearly demonstrate the Party-State has employed the market-led transfer of land use rights as the pivotal institutional mechanism to meet both ends. Subsequently, the market of the land use rights has expanded diversifying its ways of land rights transfer. Nevertheless, Chinese rural society still faces some socio-political problems particularly involving the local governance relationship in which the differing socio-economic interests of local governments, rural collectives and peasants intersect each other.