To Reallocate or Not? Reconsidering the Dilemma for China’s Agriculture Land Tenure Policy

(Draft version)

PLC WORKING PAPER SERIES NO.040

2010.10

Hui Wang

Peking University – Lincoln Center

Department of Land Management, College of Public Administration, Zhejiang University

Ran Tao

Peking University – Lincoln Center

School of Economics, Renmin University of China

Joyce Yanyun Man

Peking University – Lincoln Center

College of Urban and Environmental Sciences, Peking University

Leo KoGuan Building, Suite 508, Peking University, Beijing, 100871, China

Abstract

In China, rural land is collectively owned at the village level. Village officials usually have the power to reallocate land property on an ongoing basis due to demographic changes across families within village. Realizing that frequent land reallocation and abusive land requisition will threaten economic sustainability as well as social stability, the ‘Rural Land Contract Law’ passed in 2002 explicitly reads that farm land tenure security must be maintained for at least 30 years since 1998. The frequency and magnitude of land reallocation in Chinese villages was reduced as a whole. However, failure to allocate land to the newly increased population often induced conflicts among village members if the security of land tenure for 30 years was strictly implemented. Administrative land reallocations then still continued in some villages to accommodate demographical changes in these places. Based on an almost nationally representative rural dataset collected in 119 villages of 6 provinces across China in 2008, this paper lays out the stylized facts about the administrative land reallocation after 1998. By analyzing the subjective opinions from over 2300 farmers on the central policy of maintaining agricultural land tenure security, we are able to rationalize why some farmers support the policy while others oppose it. This analysis helps us to better understand the dilemma between efficiency and equity embedded in current agricultural land system in China. It is further shown that social conflicts between village members may easily arise either due to administrative land reallocation or due to lack of it. We argue that this dilemma faced in China’s agricultural land system cannot be resolved effectively without coordinated reforms in household registration system which can help hundreds of millions of Chinese rural migrant workers to permanently relocate in cities and release extra land for those who stay in the countryside.

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