A National Governance Perspective on the Transformation of Rural Property Rights： The Chinese Experience

Property rights have multiple attributes, and these are correlated with national governance. In the West, property rights have the economic function of maximizing efficiency and the political function of rights protection, but in China, they also have a strong social character. With the modernization of national governance, these functions interact with and transform each other. When the state＇s ability to supply public goods is relatively weak, property rights take on more of a social character, meeting public demand for welfare at the grassroots level. When the state is better able to provide public goods, the social function of property rights lessens as their economic function grows. The social character of property rights was the institutional foundation for China, as a huge agrarian state, to realize ＂governance through inaction,＂ and at the same time was the secret key that could break the code to the millennial continuity of Chinese agrarian civilization. Reforms including the collectivization of rural property rights after 1949, the ＂separation of two rights＂ （to collective ownership and household contracted land, with a focus on the latter）, and the ＂separation of three rights,＂ （to collective ownership, household contracts and revitalized land management）. These changes constitute a process in which the economic function of property rights has been growing while their social character has lessened under conditions of national governance modernization.

Resilient Small Peasants:Historical Continuity and Modern Transformation——Vitality and Autonomous Responsibility of Small Peasants in China

The question of understanding and dealing with the small peasants(xiao nong)in the course of the transition from traditional agricultural society to modern industrial society is a significant theoretical and practical issue.Previous views emphasized the peasants’vulnerability and suggested that they would eventually be replaced by other business entities.Such proposals cannot explain the fact that it was traditional small peasants who created China’s agrarian civilization and that the small farming household based on the household contract responsibility system is still the main force in China’s agricultural modernization.Re-examining the historical position and vitality of the small peasants,we can see that despite being vulnerable,they are"fragile but unbreakable;weak but never slackening"in their interaction with the external environment under various pressures.Historically,this kind of resilience has been endogenous within the long-term autonomous responsibility mechanism of China’s small peasants,expressed in their reciprocal responsibility as a community of a shared future;in their sharing of burdens as a living community;in their internalization of responsibility as a community of production;and in their joint responsibility as a political community.After 1949,rural reform created conditions for the modern transformation of the resilient small peasant.Organization,socialization and state involvement have further enhanced the modern small peasants’resilience and developmental capacity,fueling the organic integration of small peasants and modern agriculture and driving the vigor of agricultural modernization.