Farmers' interests should be fully guaranteed in the land system.
The three main agriculture-related issues - the countryside, farmers and farming - have captured the attention of the governments at all levels. Promoting the industrialized development of agriculture, transferring the rural surplus labour force and increasing farmers' incomes all involve the management of land-use rights.

The land is either State-owned or collectively owned. The old land-management system contributed to the protection of cultivated land and the development of agriculture over several decades.

During the transition from the planned economy to a market economic system, however, problems have emerged. The management of collectively owned land cannot meet the needs of rural economic restructuring; and the distribution of economic returns from the transfer of rural land-use rights under the current land system cannot fully protect farmers' interests.

The restructuring of the rural economy and the development of non-agricultural sectors demand the transfer of the land-use rights of collectively owned land. But there are no clear stipulations in current land-management law about how to conduct this.

In the early 1990s, the former State Bureau of Land Management introduced a policy whereby collectively owned land should become State-owned land before its land-use right goes onto the secondary market. (The secondary market refers to the market where the right to use the land bought from the government can be resold.)

The policy orientation changed in the mid-1990s and no longer emphasizes the transfer of ownership.

But, due to the lack of an explicit policy stipulation, the old way of working still prevails in many regions, which has hindered the land-use right of collectively owned land from entering the markets and retarded rural economic restructuring and limited how much farmers' incomes from land rent have risen.

As a result, black markets of various kinds developed in many regions, which has been detrimental to the unified management of rural and urban land.

Targeting these problems, some places - such as Suzhou in Jiangsu Province and Wuhu in Anhui Province, both in East China - have carried out reforms by letting collectively owned land's use rights entering the market directly. And sound results have been achieved in such experiments.

The existing land system was formed under the planned economy and no longer fits the needs of today's market economy.

On many occasions, land for commercial use was collected under the title of "State construction" - which often resulted in farmers' interests being hurt. Some rural land used by township enterprises was accumulated through transfers of ownership, which even caused social instability.

All these issues show that land management in rural areas needs to be reformed urgently.

The role of the government should be clearly defined. The government, as the manager of the national economy and social affairs, is like a referee who should uphold unified rules. But the fact is that lands with different forms of ownership are handled with different rules.

Furthermore, a referee should not be a player at the same time. But, in the existing land system, the government plays a double role as both manager and owner, competing with collective organizations and farmers.

Therefore, transforming government functions is vitally important to protecting farmers' interests.

The concept that farmers' interests can be sacrificed to the country's modernization should be changed.

When the People's Republic of China was founded in 1949, industrialization was the only way out for the country. The funds needed for industrialization could only be accumulated from agriculture and farmers. The building of the country's national industrial system in the first 30 years of the People's Republic mainly depended on farmers' contributions.

After China adopted its opening-up and reform policy in the late 1970s, the government granted favourable policies to agriculture and rural areas, which boosted the development of the rural economy and increased farmers' incomes.

However, the emphasis of reform shifted to the cities in the 1980s and so farmers were at a disadvantage. After the mid-1990s especially, rural areas began to suffer from a serious lack of financial resources, while the burden on farmers kept increasing.

After more than two decades of opening-up and reform, the gap between urban and rural areas has actually widened.

Unless farmers receive the same treatment as urban residents, the socialist market economy cannot be built and modernization will only be for a minority of the population.

China's current situation still cannot reach the point where industry would feed agriculture in return for help received in the past. But the development of industry and urban areas should at least not be achieved by compromising the interests of agriculture, rural areas and farmers any more.

Most of the added value achieved through changes to the use of rural land should be granted to collectives and individual farmers.

The existing land system should be reformed. Transfers of ownership of rural land for key State construction projects should be conducted properly. Farmers who lose their land should be compensated according to market prices and be resettled appropriately.

The proper transfer of the collectively owned land for construction could be a turning point of the reform.