Han Jun & Li Guo

China has made great strides in expanding the land right of the peasants and stimulate the productivity of agriculture since it began reform and opening up. But we should realize that the land right of the peasants is still fragile and infringement of their land interests in diverse ways has become a focal point of the current rural contradictions in the new situation. In order to find ways to reform the land expropriation system and protect the right of the land-lost peasants, this research team has conducted a survey that covered more than 1,000 peasant households in 39 villages in four counties (cities or districts) of four provinces and centrally-administered municipalities. The emphasis of the survey was to find out the views of the land-lost peasants on the reform of the land expropriation system. On the basis of large amounts of first-hand data, we made an in-depth analysis of the reform of the land expropriation system and put forward the following policy options for the reform.

I. China's Legal Framework for Land Expropriation System: Latest Progress

The land expropriation system constitutes the core part of the land income distribution system. After new China was founded, the first relatively systematic legal legislation on land expropriation was the Regulations on State Expropriation of Land for Construction Purpose approved by the State Council in 1953. During this period, the object of state expropriation was mainly the private land owned by the peasants. A striking feature of this land expropriation and compensation was to emphasize the consultative nature, instead of the "compulsory nature", of the land expropriation and compensation standards and to emphasize the compensation to the land-lost peasants should be "fair and reasonable". In the relative sense, it emphasized the status of the peasants as the owner of the land right and the protection of their interests. This legislation was amended in 1958. Due to the influence of the "leftist" ideology in this period, little consideration was given to the interests of the land-expropriated masses and even no compensation whatsoever was given to them. As a result, the consultative nature of land expropriation largely disappeared. In 1982, the State Council amended the Regulations on the State Expropriation of Land for Construction Purpose. Compared with the original legislation, the amended one had the following features. 1. It emphasized the compulsory nature of land expropriation. 2. It contained provisions for the first time on compensation allowance for resettlement. 3. It set a ceiling for land expropriation compensation, namely that the total sum of land compensation and compensation allowance for resettlement should be no more than 20 times the annual output value of the expropriated land. 4. It explicitly provided for the first time that the redundant rural labor arising from land expropriation should be respectively placed by the land-expropriated units, the land-using units and other related units under the organization of the county and municipal authorities in charge of land administration. In 1986, the Law on Land Administration was enacted. While turning the 1982 Regulation into a law, the Law on Land Administration had the same stipulations as the 1982 Regulation. The Law on Land Administration was amended in 1998, but the amended law continued to use the annual output value of the land used for its original purposes as the standard for land expropriation and compensation. It provided that the total sum of land compensation and compensation allowance for resettlement should be no more than 30 times the annual output value of the expropriated land. The only reform in land compensation was to increase the compensation multiplier in terms of quantitative changes. In essence, it continued to use the annual output value of the expropriated land as the base figure for compensation, a practice introduced in the early 1950s. In other words, it continued to impose a ceiling on compensation.

In 2004, the State Council adopted the Decisions on Deepening Reform and Tightening Land Administration. This document made some innovations in improving the system on land expropriation compensation and labor placement. It emphasized that land expropriation compensation should not lower the living standard of the land-expropriated peasants and that labor resettlement should ensure the long-term livelihood of these people. The document requested that with regard to the projects having stable income, the peasants might become the equity holders of these projects with their land approved to be expropriated for construction purpose. Within the areas covered by urban planning, the local people's governments should include the peasants, who became landless due to land expropriation, into their urban employment system and establish a social security system for them. Outside the areas covered by urban planning, the local people's governments should, when expropriating the land collectively owned by the peasants, must reserve necessary land for cultivation or arrange appropriate jobs within their administrative divisions for the land-expropriated peasants. With regard to the process of land expropriation, it emphasized the peasants' right to learn the truth, introduced a hearing system and called for the establishment and improvement of a coordination and adjudication mechanism to handle the disputes over land expropriation compensation and labor resettlement so as to protect the legitimate interests of both the land-expropriated peasants and the land users. With regard to compensation distribution, the document introduced the principle that the land compensation fee should be mainly used for the land-expropriated peasant households and should be rationally distributed within the rural collective economic organizations. At the same time, the use of the compensation fee by the rural collective economic organizations should be open and transparent.

The Circular of the State Council on Issues Concerning the Strengthening of Land Regulation issued later provided that the social security cost of the land-expropriated peasants should be included into the cost of land expropriation compensation and labor resettlement, that the deficiencies should be made up by the local governments with their income from the payable use of state-owned land, and that no land expropriation should be approved if the cost of social security is not properly arranged. It also provided that in land transfer, the price must first of all be used to fully make up the deficiencies of the funds required to pay the land compensation fee, the compensation allowance for resettlement, the compensation fee for ground attachments and young crops, the relocation compensation fee, and the social security cost of the land-expropriated peasants.

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