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.

Does Security of Land Operational Rights Matter for the Improvement of Agricultural Production Efficiency under the Collective Ownership in China?

Under the"separation of three rights"policy,the impact of security of land operationalrights on agricultural production efficiency has attracted much attention in recentyears.Data envelopment analysis and mediation effect analysis were applied to 888family farms run by new-type agricultural operators from Songjiang to identify themechanism of the effect of land operational rights security on agricultural productionefficiency through long-term investment.The results show that greater security of landoperational rights generally increased agricultural production efficiency.Approximately37.94 percent of the impact could be explained by long-term investment.The resultsalso indicate that significant heterogeneity exists in the effect of land operational rightssecurity on agricultural production efficiency at various levels of the family farms'efficiency distributions.lt is suggested that government should legalize land operationalrights and give them a status equal to those of households'contractual rights and landownership rights in China's future land tenure reform.