By Zhang Junkuo, DRC, and Zhang Yunhua, Research Department of Rural Economy, DRC

Research Report, No.45, 2017 (Total 5120) 2017-04-21

Abstract: Some prominent problems keep popping up in the current rural development, such as the idle and unused land resources and homesteads in particular, non-cashable housing property right for farmers and public facilities in rural areas running obsolete due to fund shortage. Although the causes of these problems are complex, they are inseparable from the uncoordinated land system for rural and urban areas and especially homesteads. The current rural homestead system is incompatible with the needs of national modernization drive and urban-rural integrated development, and the reform of this system has become quite urgent. The general approach of reform should follow the principle of sticking to collective ownership, focusing on the transfer of utilization right, and conducting systematic supportive reforms. In other words, we need to ensure the collective ownership of rural homesteads and the residential right of farmers, make efforts to push ahead with the transfer of homestead utilization right and establish the rural homestead market. In addition, we need to proceed with relevant reforms and the building of supportive systems, including the homestead welfare distribution system, the system of taxes and fees collection for homestead utilization and rural housing transaction, the mechanism for voluntary exit with compensation and integrated utilization, the planning and administrative system for rural building, and the system for separating people’s economic right from residential right.

Key words: homestead system, deepening reform, the transfer of utilization right