China's farmers dream of the good
earth By Antoaneta Bezlova
BEIJING - China's National People's
Congress has announced plans of "epoch-making
significance" to reduce the burden on the rural
population as the key to easing social tensions.
But one potentially significant measure in
improving the lot of rural residents - land rights
reform - was shelved from the agenda of the
national legislature.
This often talked
about and always deferred rural reform, however,
is the real test of the government's commitment to
helping the rural poor, experts say. "Unless
farmers are empowered to be the masters of their
own domain, they will continue to be bullied by
local governments and business interests - and
become even
more
a destabilizing force," said economist Xu Sitao,
who advises the Economist Intelligence Unit
Corporate Network in Hong Kong.
Currently,
farmers can only lease land for 25-30 years and
cannot use it as collateral to borrow and invest
in agricultural improvements that raise
productivity.
"The next stage of rural
reform must allow farmers to extend their land
leases as an intermediate step towards outright
privatization or broaden the use of land to some
non-farming, more lucrative activities," Xu said.
During this month's session, Premier Wen
Jiabao made the sobering admission that the vast
and underdeveloped countryside had been neglected
for over more than 20 years of overall economic
growth and was now returning to haunt Communist
Party leaders as rural unrest.
"The core
question of China's farmers is land, and China's
reform began with rural villages," he told
legislators at the annual Congress meeting this
month.
Chinese leaders promised to boost
rural spending and eliminate rural taxes. They
said the crippled health-care system in the
countryside would be given an infusion of cash and
primary education for rural children would be made
free.
But land reform was not dealt with.
Land rights conflicts have been at the
root of much of the social unrest in China in
recent years, particularly when agricultural land
has been arbitrarily seized by developers (who
often work hand-in-glove with local governments)
and cleared for industrial or residential
projects.
Only a fraction of the land
payments by developers reaches the affected
farmers. Most of the money goes to local
governments, which have the authority to convert
farmland for non-agricultural use. The rest of the
payments go to the village committee, which again
keeps most of it with only a pittance being used
to compensate the farmers.
Cheated of
their plots, which they view as their most
fundamental asset, peasants have resorted to
rioting. Such protests have grown increasingly
violent and widespread in recent years, despite
Beijing's demand for local officials to end
abuses.
In 2004, the Ministry of Public
Security reported 74,000 violent incidents, up
from 58,000 in 2003, and 17 of them involved more
than 10,000 people. The 2005 reports showed
another jump to 87,000 incidents of "public order
disturbances", up 6.6% from 2004.
Land
grabbing will be severely punished, Wen told the
National People's Congress. "We must respect
farmers' wishes and avoid formalism and coercive
orders," he told legislators.
While Wen
pledged that land rights of farmers would be
protected, he stopped short of saying whether they
would be in any way extended or reformed.
The lack of progress on reform of land
rights has now been identified as one of the
reasons for the failure of the legislature this
year to consider a long-discussed property law.
The law - delayed now at least for another year -
would have solidified a 2004 amendment to China's
constitution that only vaguely calls for
protecting property rights.
But one of the
real problems with the current draft was that it
failed to address the farmers' land ownership
issue, said Yang Jingyu, a legal expert with the
Legal Committee of the National People's Congress.
"We [at the committee] have received many
opinions about this and there is a consensus that
we need to conduct further study," Yang told
Beijing's daily Xinjingbao.
The lack of
land property rights not only lies at the heart of
rising rural instability but is also one of the
main constraints on rural income growth.
The disparity between urban and rural
incomes in China is large: annual disposable
income in urban areas in 2005 was US$1,304, but in
rural areas it was only $400 - just 31% of the
urban figure.
Some two-thirds of China's
1.3 billion people still live outside major urban
centers, and almost half earn their living there.
Yet rural areas have profited least from the
economic boom of recent years, partly because of
the extremely low productivity of agricultural
work. Although agricultural production accounted
for 47% of total nationwide employment in 2004, it
accounted for only for 15.2% of gross domestic
product.
The limited nature of the land
usage rights also means farmers are unable to
diversify to more profitable, non-agricultural
industries.
