简体中文
Government
China to complete land-use right registration in 5 years
Last Updated: 2013-12-26 07:24 | Xinhua
 Save  Print   E-mail

China will steadily push forward the issuing of land-use certificates in rural areas and aims to complete the work in five years, the top agriculture official said on Wednesday.

"China will expand the registration to more areas in 2014...and try to roll out the scheme nationwide in 2015 with an aim to finish the work in five years," said Minister of Agriculture Han Changfu at a national meeting on agriculture.

The registration of rural land-use rights have under the spotlight after a key reform meeting last month decided to gradually allow farmers to transfer and mortgage their land-use rights, or turn the rights into shares in large-scale farming entities.

In China, urban land is owned by the state and rural land is normally under collective ownership.

While gradual reforms since the 1980s saw the trading of urban land evolve into a vigorous property market, land in the countryside remain largely static as farmers mostly have rights to use, but cannot directly trade or mortgage them.

To allow the gradual transfer of rural land-use rights, the first step would be the registration and confirmation of the rights, without which an orderly market cannot function.

China has started the pilot registration program in 2008, which expanded to 50 counties by 2012 and to 100 more this year.

Han said two provinces will first begin experiments in all areas, while other provincial-level regions should choose at least one county for the program next year.

Rural land reform boosts equity, efficiency

China's recent move to encourage farmers to transfer the using rights of their contracted land will enhance social equity and production efficiency, analysts say.

The country will safeguard farmers' rights to contract rural land while relaxing control over using rights, according to a statement after a rural work conference last week.

"While sticking to collective land ownership, granting the right of contracting to qualified farmers is a demonstration of social equity," Ye Xingqing, an expert with the Development Research Center of the State Council, said Tuesday.

In China, rural land is normally collectively owned. The government started to allow farmers to contract for and use rural land in the early 1980s, significantly enhancing agricultural productivity as farmers got their own contracted land.

However, as China becomes urbanized and industrialized, huge labor demand and opportunities in cities have drawn millions of farmers to leave their homes and form a new group of people called "migrant workers".

Official data showed the number of rural migrant workers stood at 262.61 million by the end of 2012, accounting for 19.39 percent of the country's total population.

The profound social change requires transfer of land-use rights to large-scale farming entities, but without policy support, farmers worry that they may not get their land back, said Sun Yinghui, head of the legal center under the Ministry of Land and Resources.

"Some land is not farmed, while some people don't have land to farm. The phenomenon seriously hinder the efficiency of resource allocation," Sun said.

A landmark meeting on deepening reforms last month decided to allow farmers to transfer or mortgage their contracted land, or turn the rights into shares in large-scale farming entities.

It also made it clear that the government encourages farmers to "franchise" their lands to large farming entities, including farms, farmers' cooperatives and agricultural enterprises.

No matter how the using right is transferred, the farmers will remains the legal "owner", or contractor of their lands, according to the rural work conference.

The separation of using rights from the rights of farmers as the legal contractors reflects the requirements of current rural development and is conducive to boosting agricultural productivity, Sun said.

Encouraging farmers to transfer their land-use rights will help nurture new farming entities and make sure that rural land is farmed, he added.

Ye agreed, saying that giving rights to entities with capabilities will boost efficiency of agricultural production.

The country should safeguard the using right of farming entities by giving them more support and protection to make sure that they can benefit from farming, Ye added.

To push forward rural land reform, a prerequisite should be the registration and confirmation of farmers' rights to the lands they have contracted, according to Sun.

Last Wednesday, Agriculture Minister Han Changfu said the country will start land registration in more areas in 2014 and try to roll out the scheme nationwide in 2015 with an aim to finish the work in five years.

China started the land registration program in 2008. It had been expanded to 50 counties by 2012. More than 100 counties joined the program in 2013.

0
Share to 
Related Articles:
Most Popular
BACK TO TOP
Edition:
Chinese | BIG5 | Deutsch
Link:    
About CE.cn | About the Economic Daily | Contact us
Copyright 2003-2024 China Economic Net. All right reserved