Rural Land Rights in China: Evolution and Case Studies

Constant divisions of rural land rights and contract renegotiations are the hallmark of China’s collective ownership system.Rural land ownership,property and operation systems in China have experienced four stages of evolution:(i)The People’s Communes,which served administrative and economic functions,exercised integrated collective land ownership,property,and operation rights.(ii)Under the system of“threetier ownership with production teams as basic accounting units,”production teams exercised the ownership right over land plots with greater autonomy and were responsible for organizing farm work.(iii)The household contract system has entitled farmers to claim surplus products and turned farm households into the basic unit of agricultural production.Subsequently,the reform of collective ownership has further enhanced farmers’contract rights and separated their operation rights from contract rights.The separation of rural land ownership,contract and operation rights marks a top-down design of the structure of China’s rural land rights after the collective ownership system and the reform of household contract system.By recognizing separate contract and operation rights without changing collective ownership,the separation aims to protect rural land contract and operation rights in accordance with the law.As in the four case studies,Chongzhou,Songjiang,Meitan and Liupanshui have experienced a restructuring of collective ownership,contract and operation rights.Their experience foretells complexities in the future evolution of rural land rights in China.

Evolution logic complementary needs and reform path of China’s marine ecological protection system

The issue of marine ecology is an institutional one.China’s marine ecological protection system has gone through a process of development from scratch to existence and from less to more.However,there are still many problems to be solved,such as whether a variety of complex systems can form a joint force of governance,and whether the rear system failures,deficiencies,and conflicts.Therefore,this paper reviews the evolution logic of China’s marine ecological protection system,explores the complementary space of the existing system from the perspective of institutional complementarity,and analyzes the path of institutional reform of supplement,amendment,and coordination,to promote the effective transition of marine ecological protection system emphasizing quality over quantity.The evolution of China’s marine ecological protection system can be divided into three stages:initial establishment,steady progression,and gradual transformation,showing a trend characterized by a changing governance mode from land-sea division to land-sea integration,a changing supervision mode from government only to multi-institution coordination,a changing safeguard mode from standard norms to the legal system.The internal motivation of promoting the evolution of the marine ecological protection system is the link age between the long-overdue institutional derived demand and supply,and between institutional cost constraints and institutional income drivers.Marine ecological protection is a complex and systematic project across regions and departments,and the link age between different ecological protection systems is crucial.Based on the theory of institutional complementarity,this study finds that China’s marine ecological protection system has great complementarity needs in three aspects:protection subject,protection means,and protection process.Among them,the problem of a single unitary protection subject is mainly caused by the lack of system,the low efficiency of protection means is mainly affected by the lack of system adaptability,and the separation of protection process mainly reflects the contradiction of system incongruity and mismatch.Based on this,the supplement of China’s marine ecological protection system should focus on the government’s responsibilities and the cultivation of multiple subjects.The revision of the system should focus on the further improvement of non-governmental mechanisms such as market incentives and information disclosure.The coordination of the system should be based on the whole process from pre regulation preparations to post-regulation review,in order to promote the effective connection and cooperation of policy tools.

Evolution of Transitional Institutions for Urban Land Redevelopment in China——Case in Guangzhou

Building effective institutions for markets is a great challenge to China's transitional economy. China's experience in establishing urban land markets is characterized by trial and error and the gradual evolution of transitional institutions. Based on archive data and interviews in a neighborhood(Jinhuajie) of Guangzhou,this research reveals that China's land redevelopment in the past two decades has followed an approach of partial and gradual reform,which was structured by the gradual evolution of transitional institutions to speed up local land redevelopment within the existing property rights system. Transitional institutions,including highly compensated residents' land use rights,in-kind land lease payment,flexible control on development rights of developers and short-term actual ownership of work units,are generated by the local government sequentially to dispel existing land use rights of different land users and make further development be able to follow market mechanisms.