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Proposal for Research on Reform of Rural Land Ownership Administration in China and the Scenario for
 
 Author:Unirule  
Time:2009-09-15 14:12:46   Clicks:



 
Background
The Constitutional Law, Land Administrative Law and Agriculture Law of China determined the status of ownership and the rights of usufruct, proceeds and disposal of rural land. It can be summarized as: the ownership belongs to the state and collectivity, and the usufruct belongs to the farmers. But in fact, farmers’ rights cannot be fulfilled as expected.
1. Absence of owner
The Land Administrative Law stipulates that the ownership of collective land can be divided into 3 levels: ownership of the county (town), ownership of village and ownership of villager groups. However, not only is the collective ownership not implemented by anthropomorphized representatives, but the identification of the 3 levels of ownership is not clear enough, which results in the actual absence of collective land ownership.
2. Right to profit unfulfilled
The collectivity has no authority to impose taxes to villagers. The state possess the unilateral power to take land from collectivity at any time, however, as owner of land the collectivity has only unilateral obligation to satisfy the land taking requirement form the state. Meanwhile, the compensation for land taking is also determined completely by the state.
3. Absence of the right to dispose
The right to dispose is crucial for the owners to realize their rights. In China, the land circulation mechanism in rural area is a plan-oriented mechanism, initiated from above to below in accordance wih unified principles and methods.
 
4. Land contract dilemma
 
On the one hand, how should the land right be rearranged within the village? The difficulties of the rearrangement come not only from how to identify the right of each member of the village under the original collective system, but also from the overall consideration of the quality of current resources available and the variable human-land relations. On the other hand, the system of household production contract and land averaging, while motivating farmers by fulfilling and defining personal property rights, has decentralized the elements of productivity like land and management of agro-producing. Since the validity of land transaction is not recognized till now, the centralization of land can hardly be realized which is negative for the economy of scale and mechanization of agriculture.
 
In recent years, conflicts around rural land have become a substantial social problem. Frequent violation against land rights arouses more disputes and discussions: why the policies issued by governments cannot hold violation back? Reviewing our land ownership system, some arguments like to set up private-owned system, to strengthen state-owned system and to improve collective-owned system (the third path) were proposed.
  
The Ministry of Land and Resources issued the Guideline for Land Ownership Registration in 11th 5-Year-Plan in Aug 2006, which states, during the 11th 5-Year period, a modernized land ownership registration system should be established. Based on the legislation of land ownership registration, land ownership registration system and land rights system should be further improved, aiming the targets as following, all lands to be covered by the registration system, all registration able to be inquired, and settlement of land ownership disputes to be promoted, so as to protect the legitimate interests of the owners more effectively and to regulate the land market more systematically.

Totally 3 Pages,Now on the 1  Page   1  2  3  




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