Patterns of revenue distribution in rural residential land consolidation in contemporary China: The perspective of property rights delineation

Rural residential land consolidation (RRLC) in contemporary China refers to activities related to the replanning and reallocation of rural residential land to construct new rural residences, to increase land-use efficiency and to improve rural amenities in the context of rural revitalization. The objective of this study is to elucidate the patterns of revenue distribution in RRLC by addressing the following questions. Given incomplete and ambiguous formal rules in China, how can rural land property rights be delineated to distribute and coordinate interests among stakeholders in RRLC? Furthermore, what are the factors that determine the delineation of rural land property rights to distribute land revenue? A theoretical framework for the delineation of rural land property rights is developed from the perspectives of the institutional environment, governance and resource allocation. A comparative analysis of two typical cases of RRLC in contemporary China is conducted to support the research hypotheses. This study finds that bargaining power is the fundamental determinant of delineating rural land property rights to distribute revenue in RRLC. Furthermore, intergovernmental competition motivates the local government to fully deploy strong bargaining power, while concerns about social stability provide some constraints. A strong capability for collective action reinforces the bargaining power of rural households. This study provides new insights into the delineation of rural land property rights and subsequent revenue distribution based on distinctive institutional settings and RRLC in China, enriching the theoretical and empirical findings in the property rights school. Policy recommendations on revenue sharing of RRLC are proposed accordingly.     

Property rights and housing prices: An empirical study of small property rights housing in Shenzhen,China

Small Property Rights Housing (SPRH) is an important part of informal housing in China. SPRH is defined as housing developed with collective land ownership that is then sold to outside homebuyers such as non-indigenous villagers. This housing practice is legally forbidden and comes without formal titles. SPRH is popular in big Chinese cities where formal housing prices are constantly rising and increasingly unaffordable for many urban residents. However, research on SPRH is rare. Therefore, this study aims to investigate the effects (or the lack thereof) of de-jure property rights on housing prices by using the empirical case of Shenzhen where SPRH and FPRH estates constitute the main sources of urban housing for its residents. We collected both SPRH and formal Full Property Right Housing (FPRH) data in the Shenzhen housing market and adopted the Boundary Fixed Effect method and matching strategy to mitigate the bias caused by unobservable location and neighborhood factors. This empirical study shows that the lack of de-jure property rights has negative and significant effects on housing prices. The average housing price for SPRH apartments is, ceteris paribus, 52.82% lower than for formal FPRH apartments. Also, the premium of property rights varies across two administrative regions with different locations and economic environments, and the premium decreases as the age of the building increases.     

The effects of farmland use rights trading and labor outmigration on the governance of the irrigation commons: Evidence from China

The governance of the commons depends on collective action by resource users, which may be influenced by land use dynamics and changes in livelihood. We examine the case of China that has experienced massive outmigration of its rural population and significant changes to its land use policy. We contribute to the literature by examining the interaction effects of farmland use rights trading and rural labor out migration on collective action for the governance of the irrigation commons, which has the potential to open up a new line of theoretical and empirical inquiry. Using the socio-ecological system framework, we run ordered probit regression based on data from a survey of 125 villages in 18 provinces in China. We find that a moderate degree of farmland use rights trading has a positive effect on collective action for the governance of the irrigation commons and can slow down and mitigate the negative effect of rural labor outmigration. We conclude with implications for land use policy and governance of the commons.     

我国渔业知识产权存在的问题与对策研究

本文首先提出了渔业知识产权的概念、分类,并分析了渔业知识产权的意义,然后指出我国渔业知识产权的现状不容乐观,数量偏少,质量不高,一些渔业知识产权还被外国主体拥有。为改变这种局面,促进渔业的转型升级与良性发展,我国渔业应当贯彻实施国家知识产权战略,大力发展渔业知识产权。应采取的措施包括促进渔业知识产权的创造和运用,加强渔业知识产权的保护,加强渔业知识产权管理。     

Tenure,land rights,and farmer investment incentives in China

The goal of this paper is to understand the nature of the property rights associated with China's land tenure systems and to study the impact of these property rights on agricultural production efficiency. The results show that land tenure and associated property rights in rural China affect the production behavior of farmers. The most robust finding is that the right to use land for long periods of time encourages the use of land-saving investments. While the results show that land tenure affects agricultural production decisions, the difference between collective and private plots, however, is small compared to the private plot - communal productivity gap that existed in the pre-reform period.     

Assessment of decoupling between rural settlement area and rural population in China

In China, changes in rural settlement patterns are crucial because they may affect agricultural sustainability through encroachment on productive cropland and water resources and also reduce biodiversity. Rapid urbanization with accompanying socioeconomic transformation has resulted in decrease of the rural register population (RRP) in China since 2000. The effects of this change in RRP on rural settlement area (RSA) and the factors shaping the relationship between these measures of population and land use have attracted extensive research interest. We investigated the changes in RRP and RSA and used a decoupling model to analyze the relationship between them. We found that whereas RRP in China increased by 1.12% during 1996–2000, it decreased by 4.91% during 2000–2005. RSA increased by 0.62% and 0.09% during the periods 1996–2000 and 2000–2005, respectively. The RSA was slightly decoupled from RRP during 1996–2000 due to the shift in rural housing from one-floor houses to multi-floor houses. In the period 2000–2005, RSA was actually strongly negatively decoupled from RRP due to village-hollowing, which was driven mainly by a dual-track real property system (ownership by collectives, but use rights for individuals) as well as institutional–managerial and socioeconomic factors. In central and western China, the RSA was better able to be decoupled from RRP than in eastern China due to interprovincial rural migration.     

浅谈我国水权的物权化问题

论述水权的物权化所体现出来的积极作用,分析国内外水权制度,指出我国水权的物权化面临的问题:①水权缺乏系统的法律规定;②水权不能转让;③水权物权化的局限性。从分析水权的物权化所体现出来的积极作用入手,针对我国水权的物权化存在问题,提出解决此问题的建议:将水权纳入水法予以调整,明确水权的具体内容,建立规范的水资源市场,建立完善的水价体制,完善水资源相关立法。     

Implications of land-use change in rural China: A case study of Yucheng,Shandong province

Based on surveys on rural land-use change at village scale in Yucheng City, Shandong province, this paper presents how land-use change takes place in response to inhibitive institutional forces in light of an outmoded land ownership system and unreasonable land use rights administration, and discusses it in the broader social context of industrialization, rural depopulation, a dual-track land market, and land use legislation. Spatial comparison of land use maps interpreted from aerial photographs in different period unveils a decrease in arable land for farming, and an increase in rural settlements, facilities land and unused land. Despite rural depopulation, rural settlements area nearly tripled during 1967–2008. Nearly all newly gained non-agricultural land originated from farmland at the village fringe while formerly facilities land and unused land had been converted to residential use and it was abandoned later. Thus, the destructive farmland conversion from productive use to non-agricultural uses took place at multiple stages. Questionnaire survey of 1650 households in 48 villages in Yucheng City indicated that 41% of the households had multiple dwellings, even though some of them are not occupied or even ruined. This finding may damp the rosy picture of the reportedly slowdown in China's farmland reduction in recent years as these destructive changes are too small to detect from satellite imagery, and it will also provide a practical scientific basis for constituting more strict farmland protection objectives and strategies for China in the near future. In order to hold back the destructive conversion trend from farmland to non-agricultural uses, the authors argue that policy and institution innovation concerning land use and urban–rural development in China needs feature highly in the government's agenda.     

The effect of intellectual property rights on agricultural productivity

This article explores how the strengthening of intellectual property (IP) protection affects agricultural productivity in a panel of countries for the period 1961–2011. Using an index of IP protection for plant varieties, we study the effect of stronger intellectual property rights (IPRs) on cereal yields and two different types of cereals: Open‐pollinated (wheat) and hybrid (maize). We found that the strengthening of IPRs has a positive effect on productivity of cereals for high‐ and low‐income countries. However, we found no significant effect for middle‐income countries. In addition, we found that becoming a member of the Trade Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights negatively affects cereal yields. Finally, we found evidence of the existence of nonlinearities in the effect of IPRs on agricultural yields, which confirms a threshold effect of IPRs that also varies for countries of different income level. The findings support the hypothesis that country specificities are important in determining the effect of IPRs and imply that there is no unique system that fits all.     

Redefining property rights over collective land in the urban redevelopment of Shenzhen,China

Urban development in China is based on two types of land ownership, namely, state land owned by states and collective land owned by village collectives. Legally speaking, urban development must be based on state land. In practice, informal development based on collective land has played important roles in the rapid urbanization process over the past decades. Nonetheless, the vague property rights over collective land have led to inferior and suboptimal development outcomes in expansive urban areas. The redevelopment of collective land has become an important means to sustain urban development in an ongoing urbanization process. By adopting theoretical perspectives from New Institutional Economics, this study presents an integrated conceptual framework on the institutional arrangements of land property rights and transaction costs to understand the changes in land policies and their institutional implications for the redevelopment of collective land in Shenzhen, China. The findings reveal that the new policies have redefined the relationship among the government, village collectives, and real estate developers as well as their property rights over collective land. The change of institutional arrangements in land property rights has significantly reduced the transaction costs in the redevelopment process and effectively promoted land redevelopment activities.     

农村耕地抛荒的影响因素及治理研究——基于二次文献调查法

农村耕地抛荒是我国在城镇化发展和经济社会转型时期农村出现的一个普遍而现实的问题。农村耕地的抛荒导致农村耕地的不充分利用和有限耕地资源的极大浪费,虽然我国废除了农业税,并不断延长农村耕地承包期的时间,但农村耕地抛荒现象依然没得到遏制,本文通过二次文献调查法,搜集耕地抛荒相关的论文、报道共计557篇,通过数据整理和编码,分析和探讨当前我国农村地区的耕地抛荒问题。     

Labor migration and the decoupling of the crop-livestock system in a rural mountainous area: Evidence from Chongqing,China

Massive out-migration of rural labor force brings both challenges and opportunities to crop-livestock integrated production system (crop-livestock system) in smallholder economy. Compared with previous researches that have paid major attention to the effect of labor migration on either crop production or livestock husbandry, this study considers the mediating role of crop production in predicting the effect of labor migration on livestock raising. Our econometric estimation based on a 2012 survey of 974 rural households in Chongqing, a mountainous region of China, showed the following. (1) The massive migration of rural labor force had led to significant increase in farmland abandonment and considerable changes in the pattern of livestock raising. (2) The livestock raising number per household began to differentiate, with the livestock system separating from the traditional crop-livestock system and becoming a specialized business. (3) In terms of the pathways through which rural labor migration exerts impact on livestock raising number, though the increased opportunity costs of rural labor greatly reduced farmers’ willingness to raise livestock, the decoupling of the crop-livestock system partly alleviated the declining trend in the livestock raising number because of the availability of household labor force freed from cropping via farmland abandonment. These findings have important policy implications for rural development and agricultural restructuring in mountainous areas of China, and provide references for other developing countries.     

Spatio-temporal dynamic patterns of farmland and rural settlements in Su–Xi–Chang region: Implications for building a new countryside in coastal China

This paper analyzes the spatio-temporal dynamic patterns of farmland and rural settlements from 1990 to 2006 in Su–Xi–Chang region of coastal China experienced dramatic economic and spatial restructuring, using high-resolution Landsat TM (Thematic Mapper) data in 1990, 1995, 2000 and 2006, and socio-economic data from both research institutes and government departments. To examine the spatial patterns of farmland and rural settlements and their change over time, a set of pattern metrics that capture different dimensions of land fragmentation was identified. The outcomes indicated that, to a large extent, land-use change from 1990 to 2006 in Su–Xi–Chang region was characterized by a serious replacement of farmland with urban and rural settlements, construction land, and artificial ponds. Population growth, rapid industrialization and urbanization are the major driving forces of farmland change, and China's economic reforms played an important role in the transformation of rural settlements. China's “building a new countryside” is an epoch-making countryside planning policy. The focuses of building a new countryside in coastal China need to be concentrated on protecting the farmland, developing modern agriculture, and building “clean and tidy villages.” Rural construction land consolidation and cultivated land consolidation are two important ways to achieve the building objectives. The authors argue that it is fundamental to lay out a scientific urban–rural integrated development planning for building a new countryside, which needs to pay more attention to making the rural have certain functions serving for the urban. In addition, the cultural elements of idyll and the rural landscape need to be reserved and respected in the process of building a new countryside in coastal China, instead of building a new countryside, which looks more like a city.     

农地发展权的设立与土地征用制度改革

由于我国农村集体土地的权属关系界定不清、土地征用制度改革的严重滞后等问题，从而导致了在土地征用过程中的诸多问题，其中主要是土地增值收益的分配与对失地农民的合理补偿问题。本文试图从产权界定的角度，探讨农地发展权设立的必要性、合理性以及它对土地征用制度改革的积极影响。     

Property rights reform to support China’s rural ‐ urban integration: household‐level evidence from the Chengdu experiment

In 2008, as part of a national experiment, Chengdu prefecture implemented ambitious property rights reforms including complete registration of all land together with measures to ease transferability and eliminate migration restrictions. Results from a difference‐in‐difference analysis of the National Statistics Bureau's regular household survey suggest that the reforms increased consumption and income, in particular for less wealthy and less educated households, with estimated benefits well above the cost of implementation. Local labour supply increased with the young shifting towards agriculture and the old towards off‐farm employment. The reforms also contributed to higher agricultural yields and profits through three channels, namely: (i) greater rental market activity that transferred land to more productive producers; (ii) substitution of purchased inputs for labour; and (iii) a shift out of grains towards vegetables, corn, and oilseeds all of which offer higher levels of profitability. All of these findings are consistent with the notion that, without reforms, imperfections in factor markets undermined investment and functioning of land and labour markets, preventing high‐value peri‐urban land from being used most effectively and reducing job creation.     

Accelerated restructuring in rural China fueled by ‘increasing vs. decreasing balance’ land-use policy for dealing with hollowed villages

Rapid industrialization and urbanization in China has produced a unique phenomenon of ‘village-hollowing’, shaped by the dual-track structure of socio-economic development. This paper analyzes the phenomenon of ‘village-hollowing’, identifying the processes and influences that have driven their evolution, and highlighting the challenge that the locking-up of unused rural housing land in ‘hollowed villages’ presents for China in the context of concerns over urban development and food security. The paper examines the ‘increasing vs. decreasing balance’ land-use policy has been adopted by the Chinese government in response to the problem, which seeks to balance increases in urban construction land with a reduction in rural construction land. The implementation of the scheme is discussed through a case study of Huantai county in Shandong province, drawing attention to its contested and contingent nature. It is argued that the policy is a top-down approach to rural restructuring that necessarily requires the acquiescence of local actors. However, it is noted that failures to adequate engage with local actors has led to resistance to the policy, including violent protests against the demolition of housing. The paper suggests that lessons might be learned from Europe by incorporating elements of ‘bottom-up’ planning into the process. As such, the paper demonstrates that rural restructuring in China is a dynamic, multi-scalar and hybrid process that shares common elements and experiences with rural restructuring in Europe and elsewhere, but which is also strongly shaped by the distinctive political, economic, social and cultural context of China.     

LADM-based profile for farmland Tripartite Entitlement System in China

Since the beginning of the 21st century, China has undergone a promotion of industrialisation, urbanisation and agricultural modernisation. This promotion has triggered the mass migration of rural labour forces into cities, leading to the virtual situation of the separation of farmland contract and operation rights. To respond to this issue, the central government proposed a strategy of farmland reform in China. Such reform aims to transform the former ‘Bipartite Entitlement System’ into a ‘Tripartite Entitlement System (TES)’.¹ Land registration provides the means for recognising formalised property rights and regulating the characteristics and transfer of land-related rights. As for farmland registration in China, it serves as a basis to explore effective forms of collective farmland ownership by implementing collective farmland ownership, stabilising farmers’ contract rights and liberalising farmland operation rights. Thus, in this study, on the basis of the farmland tripartite entitlement (hereinafter referred to as ‘FTE’) reform in China, we develop a Land Administration Domain Model (LADM)-based TES model that will serve as the basis of subsequent system development. Specifically, first, we summarise the evolution process of China’s farmland rights system since the foundation of new China. Second, we propose a farmland rights system after the FTE reform. Then, the corresponding TES model is developed based on the LADM standard and some instance-level diagrams for farmland administration activities. The new functionality of the model includes improved structuring of farmland rights and restrictions (and related source documents) and improved expansion of the land information infrastructure to rural areas.     

Analyzing the behavioural mechanism of farmland abandonment in the hilly mountainous areas in China from the perspective of farming household diversity

Revealing the mechanism under the occurrence of farmland abandonment from the perspective of farming household diversity is conducive to proposing well-directed farmland protection policies. With a thorough consideration and study of cases in some hilly mountainous areas in China, this paper uses behaviour decision models of farming households to systematically understand and analyse the behavioural mechanism leading to farmland abandonment by different types of farming households, including aged households, stable part-time households, unstable part-time households and pure households. The mechanism is empirically analysed with a logistic regression model by household survey data collected from Jiangxi and Guizhou, 2 Chinese provinces, and the results observed as follows: (1) age is a key determinant of farmland abandonment of aged households, and as the age of farm labourers increases by one year, the probability of farmland abandonment increases by 8.5 %; (2) off-farm labourers is a key determinant of farmland abandonment of stable part-time households, and for each additional number of off-farm labourers, the abandonment probability increases by 41.4 %; (3) plot features such as land quality, irrigation and distance to home, are the main determinants affecting farmland abandonment of pure households; and (4) high possibility for unstable part-time households not to abandon farmland. A series of policy measures targeted for diverse farming households are therefore finally proposed to alleviate the farmland abandonment in hilly mountainous areas and other areas with similar problems.     

Changes in property-use relationships on French farmland: A social innovation perspective

Land issues are a major constraint for resource management, whether it relates to urban planning, environmental protection or agricultural development. There is presently a proliferation of initiatives by a diversity of actors, that produce notable changes in terms of land tenure. A few studies have described some of them in France, without analysing the change mechanisms. Moreover, land tenure is often difficult to understand given its complexity and its multiple dimensions. Here, we propose an analysis of land tenure changes with the lens of property-use relationships (PUR), through a social innovation framework. This allows us to analyse the collective action at the heart of change. The analysis rests upon two case studies selected for their multiscale character, and as two different entries to scrutinize land changes: the “Terre de Liens” movement, a new actor stemming from civil society; and the “rural land lease subject to environmental clauses”, a recent authorized instrument of tenancy contract. These land tenure changes are important although circumscribed because they involve all actors’ spheres and scales and create new frameworks. These changes contribute to express societal demands through new lessor’s management right. Where the parties to the PUR share a common reference framework and the same agricultural development objective, the conditions set out in the PUR seem guaranteed. If they do not, a mutual acculturation process seems necessary – beyond the contractual terms – to enable a compromise between the management rationales of a protected area in one hand, and a farm on the other hand.     

Governing farmland conversion: Comparing China with the Netherlands and Germany

Farmland conversion has become an increasing concern in China and other parts of the world, including Europe and the USA. Be it for environmental or food security reasons, questions arise concerning how urbanization should be governed, i.e. what rules and regulations could enhance the efficiency and sustainability of land use. Taking a first step toward answering such questions, this paper describes different governance structures for farmland conversion in the Netherlands, Germany, and China. Secondly, it compares five identified differences between these countries in the realms of land property, land use planning, the role of the market, the role of government, and the performance of governance structures. The purpose of this paper is to develop an approach for comparing governance structures for land conversion that: (a) offers some opportunities for exchange of experience between the three countries and (b) provides a framework for further research on governance structures in farmland conversion.