By Ye Xingqing, research team on “Strategies and Policies Guiding the New Normal of Economic Growth”, DRC

Research report No.159, 2016 (Total 5042) 2016-11-28

Abstract: Rural migrant farmers working in cities still enjoy their eligible land contract right, the right to use their homesteads and the right to share in the proceeds from rural collective operations at their birth place. How to deal properly with such rights not only concerns the expansion of agricultural operation scale, the boost of agricultural modernization and the effective utilization of rural construction land, but also has an impact on the continuous development of new-type urbanization. Since 2003, relevant laws and policy documents on the above-mentioned farmers’ rights have undergone an evolving process, changing from emphasizing land function to highlighting property attribute, from unilaterally focusing on “one right” to covering “three rights”, from stressing “protection” to underlining “transfer”. The general principle of supporting and guiding the transfer of farmers’ “three rights” presented by this report is as follows. 1. Efforts could be made to successively enlarge the scale of transfer reform in the order of right to use homesteads, land contract right and right to share in the proceeds from rural collective operations. 2. The reform needs to be pushed forward and intensified gradually from common villages, suburban villages and villages in cities. 3. Different transferees and their dominant relations need to be made according to different regions and property rights. 4. The construction of supporting system needs to be strengthened.

Key words: land contract right, right to use homesteads and right to share in the proceeds from rural collective operations, transfer