Social Sciences in China (Chinese Edition)

No.7, 2020

Farmers are Getting Ever More Distant from the Land—Land Transfer and the “Three Rights Separation” System

(Abstract)

Zhu Dongliang

Since reform and opening up 40 years ago, China’s rural land system has experienced a major change, from the “separation of two rights” to the “separation of three rights.” An investigation of the current practice of the separation of three rights must start from the key area of land transfer. A textual analysis of field survey data in different parts of the Chinese countryside found that the rapid development of industrialization and urbanization has led to a rapid rise in large-scale and intensive land circulation. The traditional small peasant economic structure has thus tended to disintegrate, and farmers are getting ever more distant from the land. Moreover, in practice, the “separation of three rights” of rural land has shown some new features: i.e., the actualization of collective ownership, the shareholding and capitalization of the contractual right, and the marketization of operational rights. At the same time, this shows a new evolutionary trend, i.e., the strengthening position of land owners and those who have the right to operate the land, with the weakening position of farmers’ contract rights. The future reform of the village land system must be based on realizing the goal of comprehensive rural revitalization and must explore the construction of a new market collective economic system.