Tracing Agricultural Land Transfer in China: Some Legal and Policy Issues

Chao Zhou, Yunjuan Liang and Anthony Fuller
Additional contact information
Chao Zhou: College of Humanities and Development Studies, China Agricultural University, Beijing 100083, China
Yunjuan Liang: College of Humanities and Social Development, Northwest A&F University, Xi’an 712100, China
Anthony Fuller: School of Environmental Design and Rural Development, University of Guelph, Guelph, ON N1G 2W1, Canada

Land, 2021, vol. 10, issue 1, 1-16

Abstract: This paper traces the evolution of land tenure changes in contemporary China since 1949. The transfer of land from peasant households to family farms and commercial sized units is on a vast scale and forms one of the greatest land reforms we have ever seen. The agrarian question forms both the policy and academic context in which this legislative account of land transfer is assessed and raises the question of whether land assembly in China resembles previous agricultural transformation policy and processes in industrialized countries or to what extent it has special characteristics of its own. The security of land holding in rural China, established with the household responsibility system, is seen to mature slowly over three to four periods of adjustment, always protecting the rights of peasants while improving conditions for increasing land productivity, resulting in an extension of the two rights of peasant holdings to three rights in the new millennium. The introduction of a third right, a land management right which is transferable from peasants to outsiders, has enabled a huge land assembly movement affecting millions of small holdings. This process of land tenure restructuring raises such questions as the consequences of the capitalization of agriculture, peasant land dispossession, proletarianization, and the prospect of a future land market in rural China, all topics for further research.

Keywords: the agrarian question; land transfer; peasant rights; legislative policy; village elites (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: Q15 Q2 Q24 Q28 Q5 R14 R52 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (19)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/2073-445X/10/1/58/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/2073-445X/10/1/58/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jlands:v:10:y:2021:i:1:p:58-:d:478072

Access Statistics for this article

Land is currently edited by Ms. Carol Ma

More articles in Land from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().