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As calls for Chinese rural land reform get louder, will Beijing take a soft approach?
- Despite widespread experiments in rural land reform across China, experts doubt any major moves will be made at the upcoming third plenum
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Mandy Zuoin Shanghai
The Communist Party of China is about to hold its much-delayed third plenum, traditionally a time for unveiling major economic strategies for the next five to 10 years. The second of a six-part preview series looks at the likelihood of any major reforms to open up rural land ownership, amid the glut of real estate stock and the economic downturn.
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In 1978, 18 farmers in a small village in China met in secret to sign an agreement that they would divide their village’s collectively owned land between them, allowing each household to keep any surplus harvest after they had filled government quotas.
The village, Xiaogang, in eastern China’s Anhui province, has since entered the history books as the birthplace of the household contracting system that defied collective farming and became the trigger that set China on its road to economic rise.
But if there was any expectation that farmers’ land ownership would continue to lead the country’s economic reform, it is an idea that has stagnated over the past four decades. While there has been market reform in other areas, rural land now remains the last means of production that has not yet been completely freed in an economy which is now the second-largest in the world.
It is an area of the economy, too, that economic and agricultural experts say is unlikely to see any major moves made at the upcoming third plenum, a long-anticipated party meeting to champion China’s reform agenda – despite widespread experiments in rural land reform both across the country and across the years.
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Unlike urban areas, rural land is collectively owned by village committees and is mostly not able to be traded. While many have urged changes to allow rural land on the open market, the experts agree that in the face of an economic downturn with rising geopolitical uncertainty and weak demand, authorities are likely to remain cautious.
“We’ve been vowing to make resources flow between urban and rural areas on the one hand, but talking about caution in reforming the land system on the other, so ultimately there is not any progress,” said Professor Zheng Fengtian, from the school of agricultural economics and rural development at Renmin University in Beijing.
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