中国土地制度变迁小考

Abstract

As a traditional agricultural country, land has been a crucial element to farmer issue,rural issue, and agriculture issue in China. The reform of rural economic system in Chinacan be considered as starting around the rural land system. Whether it is in thenew-democratic revolution or in the period of socialist construction, rural land policyis always an extremely important policy related to success of China's revolution andconstruction. The Xinhai Revolution overthrew the autocratic monarchy, which ruled China forseveral thousand years, and established a republican form of government. Although itsucceed in making a progress in China, but failed to change the old China's land system. During the Republican period in China, the Communist Party implemented a seriousland reform policies in revolutionary base areas. However, after the establishment ofPeople's Republic of China, China started a top-down government-led cooperationmovement in rural area since 1953. It gradually established public ownership systemof materials for agricultural production, even including the land, which seriouslydampened farmers' enthusiasm for production. In 1978, Chinese government decidedto contract collective land to peasant families to farm within a certain period accordingto the community population. In June 1985, government cancelled the people'scommunes, completed the township (Xiang in Chinese) government reform. Then,Chinese government promulgated "Law of the People's Republic of China on LandContract in Rural Areas" in 2002, which clearly defines the rights and obligations of farmers, rural collectives, and all levels of governments in the land contract, andemphasizes the protection of management rights of farms. In accordance with the law, the management and services of land contractualmanagement rights has been strengthened; the land contractual and management rightstransaction market has been improved; farmer are allowed to transfer the landcontractual management rights by subcontracting, leasing, exchanging, transferring, jointstock cooperating under the principles of voluntary and compensation, in order todevelop various forms of appropriate management scale. Recently, facing of China's land crisis and the plight of agriculture, theorists launcheddiscussions about China's public ownership of land, the types and nature characteristicsof land ownership, the separation of the land ownership and use rights, and thecompensatory transfer of land use rights, etc. Under the socialist system with Chinesecharacteristics, the direction of land reform should be adopt with the development ofproductive forces. What's more, Chinese land system in the 21st century will also needcontinual revise and improvement to meet the requirement of the construction of asocialism with Chinese characteristics.