context: The document lays out the rural land reform agenda and direction, although the reform process still depends on detailed special regulations. What's new in the document includes allowing secure financing with farmland use rights, which is likely to facilitate farmland transfer. Reforms on rural land acquisition, marketisation of collective construction land and homestead reforms, which are being piloted, are likely to be implemented comprehensively.
The 2019 No.1 Document calls for substantial work on rural land reform policy agendas, reports Yicai. Pilot reforms on marketisation and collateralisation of rural land have been ongoing since 2015, says the piece, and now cover 33 county-level cities. Those pilots will conclude end-2019.
Gao Chunmao 高春茂 Shanghai Younong Internet Tech Co. Ltd president highlights efforts to allow farmland use rights to be mortgaged or used to secure financing. This will certainly encourage land transfers, Gao says, but may bring about unintended negative consequences, including
- significantly increasing land rental prices
- benefitting farm operators that hold land use rights but possibly excluding farming households holding land contract rights
- over-complicated procedures that hinder implementation
Feng Kui 冯奎 China City and Town Reform and Development Centre secretary general says marketisation aspects of the land reform agenda are critical to removing barriers between rural and urban areas and should be viewed as a step toward a unified national land market. He argues reforms allowing direct marketisation of rural construction land, rather than requiring nationalisation as a first step, benefit rural development by
- increasing land supply for industry and business use, such as developing specialty towns and rural tourism
- raising income for farmers
- removing local governments' ability to abuse land conversion processes as a source of government revenue, pushing them to pursue real local development to boost tax revenue