Farmers to benefit equally from China's development

BEIJING - Urbanization reform is expected to give rural residents the chance to benefit more from China's development, said Chen Xiwen, a senior rural planner for the central government.

The masterplan, approved by the third plenary session of the 18th Communist Party of China Central Committee last week, portrays a new city-country dynamic, but making it work will be no easy task for the government, Chen told Xinhua.

Chen is the deputy director of the CPC Central Committee's leading group on rural matters and was one of those who helped draft the 20,000-character manifesto, which observers say is the boldest package of policies seen in decades.

Reform must accelerate in key areas, with decisive results to be obvious by 2020. Leading the agenda is economic reform, which includes financial and fiscal matters, social services, state-owned enterprises, streamlining government and urbanization.

Urbanization plans largely deal with rural property rights, the Hukou (household registration) system and land reform.

More property rights

The plan promises to give the country's 650 million rural population more property rights. In Chen's view, rural property rights are still not fully protected and more needs to be done.

Some measures are already underway, including changes to the system of collective forest rights and registration of rural land collective ownership. These will lay a foundation for better protection of individual property rights, Chen said.

China needs a system which allows best use to be made of property rights, bringing most benefit to those who hold them. The plan has listed some major measures to be taken.

A rural property market will be established. People will be encouraged to transform their collective rights into a shareholding system. Shares will be fully fungible, may be used as collateral or guarantees and will be heritable. The current homestead system in rural areas will be improved, and a pilot program will enable the mortgaging and transfer of homesteads.

The government will allow the sale, lease and demutualization of rural construction land with a number of restrictions. These specific measures on a market for land under construction will further protect rural land rights. Rural land is no longer farmed collectively, but remains under collective ownership. Urban land, on the other hand, is owned by the state. A prosperous property market developed in cities since the 1990s.

Land of rural collectives and the state should have an equal footing in the market, with collective land enjoying the same rights and prices as State-owned land. Land expropriation should be scaled down and the procedure standardized. The rural compensation mechanism must be improved.