The move to deepen rural land shareholding reform will grant peasants more bargaining power against the state in land acquisition deals, argues He Xuefeng 贺雪峰 Huazhong University of Science and Technology rural governance research centre director.
The newly released 'Opinions on rural collective property rights reform' stresses the need to proceed with management assets corporatisation, and to verify and quantify rural collective organisation members’ rights holding status by granting them stock shares, explains He. The policy is targeted primarily at wealthy countryside areas and villages in urban suburbs, where peasants enjoy comparatively high income and where rural construction land has been appropriated for urban purposes, says He. The increase in land value, coupled with ambiguous land rights ownership status, has triggered numerous local disputes and unrest during state land acquisition projects, says He, so has the vague ownership of profits from collective rural enterprises. Without well-defined legal ownership of collective property, individual peasants fell victim to the arbitrary will of the state, he says.
Corportising rural construction land and enterprises will allow peasants to provide supervision over local land management, argues He, as well as collectively bargain for more compensation during state land acquisition. But the organised peasants might also require compensation that governments can ill-afford, worries He, risking derailing the country’s larger urbanisation plans.