Social Sciences in China (Chinese Edition)

No.11, 2013

The Practice and Reconstruction of Property Rights in Village Communities: An Analytical Framework for Collective Forest Property Disputes

(Abstract)

Zhu Dongliang

The variety of disputes over collective forest property that have emerged from the reform of collective forest property system reveals that a clearly defined property reform design modeling on the household contract responsibility system is incompatible with the informal property system that has been inherited from village communities. Hence the problem: the existing theory of collective property practice cannot provide a sufficient and effective explanation of the property right disputes arising from collective forest property practice. In a similar way, the existing system arrangements about collective property rights also hamper the negotiation of forest property rights and the sustainable management and utilization of forestland. It is thus necessary to build a more encompassing analytical framework for rural property system, namely village community property right, so as to highlight the subjective role of village communities in the property right practice and integrate the community property values that have been accumulated and inherited in village transformations. The introduction of a rational mechanism that has formed in the property right practice of village communities may help improve and promote the transformation of rural property system and establish a clearly defined modern rural property system.