Land Issues Behind Household Reform

The two element system of urban and rural division in China originated from the development strategy of taking heavy industry as the priority goal in the planned economy period, that is to say, in the premise of dividing urban and rural factor markets, we should extract surplus from rural areas to subsidize urban industry through price distortions.

This planned economic tradition has led to the separation of the two yuan economic structure between urban and rural areas, and also the low level of urbanization in China.

In the stage of reform and opening up, although the original development strategy has been corrected, the segmented urban and rural factor market has not been completely unified.

The goal of urban and rural co-ordination reform is to realize the free flow of production factors between urban and rural areas, while maintaining the rapid development of urbanization, raising farmers' income and changing backward rural areas.

Household registration and land: the focus of balancing urban and rural areas

Taking population mobility as an example, although rural residents are no longer restricted to urban work, due to the division of household registration, migrant workers can not get public services and social welfare equivalent to urban residents. This causes many migrant workers to become "floating population", which is difficult to live in the city for a long time, and hinders the process of population urbanization.

Although the shortcomings of the current household registration system are well known, it is not easy to reform.

The biggest difficulty is that the household registration is attached to a lot of public services and social welfare.

This means that breaking the division of urban and rural household registration will have to pull the huge gap between urban and rural residents in these areas, which will cause huge financial burden.

It is not only household registration, but also the segmentation of urban and rural land market.

Although farmers can occupy and permanently use collective construction land, including homestead, they have no right to pfer to urban residents and industrial and commercial enterprises.

Under the existing land expropriation system, land acquisition is the only legal way to expand urban land use.

Rural and farmers have the obligation of land to be expropriated by the state, can obtain the one-time compensation according to the original use of land, but can not share the higher value added income of the land.

At the same time, the urban and rural land market has hindered the optimal allocation of space resources and affected the concentration of industry and population.

Just like the huge welfare differences between urban and rural hukou, the segmentation of land market also causes huge difference between urban and rural land value.

The difference is that the great difference of land value will not only become a resistance to reform, but also provide a backing for the overall development of urban and rural areas.

This is because once the urban and rural land market is opened up, the land gradation between the urban and rural areas will be used to invest in the countryside, improve the rural appearance and improve the living standard of the peasants.

Therefore, household registration and land become the focus of urban and rural reform.

The idea of linking land with household registration and using rural land for social welfare attached to urban household registration also came into being.

"Land for social security" is an expression of image, which means to abandon peasants' land and obtain social security, which represents the various social welfare of the city.

However, doubts also follow.

The main content of the query is that public services including social security, housing, medical care and education are the social benefits that citizens deserve. If linked to land, it is inevitable that people will have doubts about the government's deprivation of peasants through reform.

In addition, social security as a payment in the future, its liability to pay is pushed to the future, and it is inevitable that people will have doubts about the government's shirking its responsibilities.

The proposed reform of households in Chengdu will also "farmers enter the city without sacrificing the property rights of contracted land and homestead" as a bright spot for reform, so as to dispel people's fear of depriving farmers of the benefits of reform.

The significance of curing rural property rights is profound.

In the early 80s of last century, the reform of rural property rights redefined the right of farmers to use collective land and management rights, and solved the problem of food and clothing in rural areas.

However, farmers still lack the complete land property rights, the most important of which is the right to pfer.

The inequality of rights aggravates the disparity of property income between urban and rural residents, which is the main reason for the widening income inequality between urban and rural areas.

The acceleration of urbanization has provided new opportunities for rural development, and has also put forward new requirements for the rural economic system. It is necessary to develop a rural property right system with a clear right to use and management right as the focus of a more complete property right system.

Farmers are the rights holders of the property rights of rural production factors. Peasants have the right to occupy, use, earn and pfer the right to contracted management of rural land, collective construction land (Homestead), housing ownership, Lin Quan and collective assets.

Only in this way can the tort in the process of urbanization be restrained from the system, and the income gap between urban and rural areas will be narrowed.

It is against this background that Chengdu started the reform of the rural property right system in early 2008 and carried out the right of farmland in the whole area.

The right to land contractual management and the right to use the homestead are solidified as a property right granted by the rural collective economic organizations to farmers.

As a result, farmers' right to land property is solidified through the right of confirmation, and will not be lost because of the change of household registration or the unification of urban and rural household registration. This will set up a platform for the establishment of property based factor market and prepare for the household registration reform.

It is the natural result of the reform of the rural property right system in Chengdu that the idea of "entering the city without sacrificing the property rights of contracted land and homestead" is a concept.

In this way, the peasants will enter the city with their property rights and get equal pay for equal work with the urban residents, so that they can get the same status in the aspects of wage formation, social security and welfare, so that they can live long enough to raise their consumption level, improve their quality of life, and truly realize the so-called "urbanization of population".

Similarly, urban residents can legally acquire the property rights pferred by rural residents through standardized inheritance, donation and paction.

The reform of land property rights and household registration reform are parallel with the breakthroughs in key areas and key links of rural grassroots governance mechanisms and urban and rural integrated services in recent years in Chengdu, which provide basic conditions for the free flow of production factors between urban and rural areas, and create a prerequisite for deepening urban and rural integration.

Household reform needs matching land requisition system reform

However, reunification of urban and rural household registration reform is not easy.

There are two ways to unify the public services and social welfare of urban and rural residents. One is to nurture the countryside, and the other is to reduce the welfare level of the urban residents, so as to raise the welfare level of the rural residents.

Such a reform will undoubtedly damage the interests of urban residents.

Another way is to gradually increase the welfare level of rural residents to the level of urban residents, and ultimately achieve equalization.

Undoubtedly, this will require enormous financial resources.

How to ensure that the 12 measures of Chengdu household reform should be financially guaranteed should be carefully measured.

In addition, Chengdu and Chongqing, which are the first to implement household registration reform, are mainly outflow of migrant workers.

Therefore, the unification of urban and rural household registration is mainly about the unification of the urban and rural residents in the area, and less about the issue of how the population outside the jurisdiction can get equal public services and social welfare in the area.

Once the household reform is launched to the whole country, it will be a severe test for those areas where large numbers of migrant workers are inflow.

Objectively speaking, huge public services and social welfare expenditure will undoubtedly depend on the benefits generated by urbanization.

The core issue is how the land value-added benefits brought about by urbanization will be applied to urban and rural residents.

Will we continue to adhere to the land expropriation system, deprive the peasants in the way of "land finance", and redistribute them through the government's hands? Or will we break the land requisition system, completely return to the people, open up the urban and rural land market, and allow the collective construction land to participate in the urban construction on the basis of planning and usage control, so that farmers can directly share the land value-added benefits brought about by urbanization?

In the third Plenary Session of the 17th CPC Central Committee, a land reform plan was proposed to reduce the scope of land expropriation, push rural collective business construction land into the market, and realize the same land and land rights in urban and rural areas.

Chengdu has also had many spontaneous or government driven innovations in the collective construction land market. After the 5 / 12 earthquake, the joint construction policy of Dujiangyan, Dayi and Pengzhou quickly mobilized a large number of social funds in a short period of time and participated in the post disaster recovery and reconstruction in rural areas.

Shuangliu County's Dragon Industrial Port has built industrial parks on collective construction land, and has been retained by land farmers for ownership of land, so that land gains can be continuously sustained.

In Jinjiang District, the direct pfer of the right to use collective construction land is beginning to show.

The attempt to reform the land acquisition system allows farmers to directly share the land value-added benefits brought by urbanization, while avoiding the frequent land acquisition and demolition conflicts in recent years.

Such a way of land revenue distribution under the urbanization will not only protect the rights and interests of farmers, but also effectively mobilize social funds, which can help overcome the huge difficulties faced by single household registration reform.

As an important part of the overall urban and rural reform, the household registration reform in Chengdu is expected to achieve breakthroughs in land system reform, rural grassroots governance mechanism reform, and urban and rural integration of public service reform.