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Extract and translated from the French E-bulletin China Analysis – Les Nouvelles de Chine n°13, March–Apr. 2007, pp. 3-5
French Editor: M.Meidan. Translation: Peter Brown
There is no longer any doubt that the issue of the peasant’s situation is on the top of the political agenda in China. The urgent nature of the situation recalls the need felt at the time of the launch of the Reform and Opening up to reinvigorate the rural areas, which had been neglected in favour of the urban sector. However, the past three issues of China Analysis have followed the debates raised by this question, on the one hand over the growing number of challenges, political, legal and macroeconomic, and on the other over the means to a solution to the problem. The question arises as to whether these difficulties are due to the social and political representation of the peasants, to the shortcomings of the legal system or to the system of subsidies.
These questions are, admittedly, closely inter-connected, but the various explanations offered by analysts for the problem and ways of solving it, and the relative freedom of expression surrounding it, translate the Government’s perplexityin the face of this situation.
Summary and commentary by Valérie Demeure‑Vallée, based on:
- Qiu Feng, "A key component in the development of the countryside is the protection of civil rights", 21 Shiji Jingji Baodao, 27 March 2007.On January 29th 2007, the Chinese government published its Document n° 1 for 2007 on the theme of "the three rural questions" (三农san nong)[1]. At the press conference that followed, Chen Xiwen, in charge of the working group on rural areas within the Central Committee, talked about the protest movements in the countryside, mainly in connection with the problems of land requisition (土地征占问题 tudi zhengzhan wenti). For the journalist Qiu Feng, this situation shows that there cannot be a successful development of the countryside without a real guarantee of peasants’ rights.
Chen Xiwen acknowledges that the requisition of land is very commonly behind the petitions (上访 shangfang), in which the peasants express their grievances, as well as incidents by groups in the countryside, which have been on the rise since the mid-1990s.
According to him, local governments are directly responsible for this situation. They behave like veritable landowners and make no bones about using their power of constraint (强制性的权 qiangzhixing de quanli) to proceed with land requisitions, in order to attract industrial investors and to develop the cities. Renting out land to industries enables them to become rich, since they levy industrial taxes as well as land taxes. Accordingly, no distinction is made between land used for public purposes and land for commercial use when they proceed with expropriations[2].
The government has adopted various political measures to improve the situation. In 2004, the State Council published its Document n° 28, which provides for the upward reevaluation of the standard procedures for compensating peasants in cases of expropriation, providing them with a range of services and, in particular, training for "landless peasant farmers" (失土农民 shitu nongmin), so that they can move into a new branch of employment, and enable them to benefit from the social welfare system, normally reserved for farmers working the land.
The State Council furthermore published Document n° 31, in August 2006, whereby all cash income stemming from the sale of land (土地出让金的收入 tudichurangjin de shouru) must be held in reserve and incorporated into the budgets and finances of the local authorities, in order to guarantee compensation, training and social security expenses incurred by landless peasants. This document also indicates that the lands used by industries must not be sold off cheaply, but should be subject to a tender process (招拍挂制度 zhaopaigua zhidu).
In pratice, however, these protective policies are barely applied, given the shortcomings in the current institutional and legal system.
Institutionally, although villages are in theory "autonomous organisations", townships and the governments of district municipalities (县市 xianshi) intervene as they please in the collective affairs of the village, including in terms of expropriation. Moreover, rural collectives (农民集体 nongmin jiti), which are theoretically the sole owners of rural lands, have in reality no legal or administrative right of recourse for the recognition of their rights to the land.
Finally, the rights of peasants to the land are incomplete, for whilst they have the right to use it or sub-let it, they do not have the right to dispose of it[3].
Accordingly, the governments of district municipalities impose their own rules of expulsion and compensation on landless peasants, the latter have no recourse other than to make petitions, for want of any legal or administrative avenue available.
In such a tense, social context, the journalist Qiu Feng is sorry that the measures adopted by the government are limited to compensation (补救 bujiu). He deplores the fact that these measures do not settle the heart of the problem, what is more, these measures are not even being applied systematically. In his view, the government must reform the present system, define and gurantee the rights of peasant farmers, particularly their rights over land, and reconcile two different logics, that of “well-being”, (福利逻辑 fuli luoji), and that of “rights” (权利逻辑 quanli luoji). The protection of peasant rights must, according to him, be a pre-condition of any consideration of well-being and development.
A better protection of their private rights would be beneficial, if it were to sanction the local authorities in case of the illegal disposal of arable lands (sales, requisitions, etc.) as well as in the case of non-payment or under-evaluation of financial compensation granted to peasants whose lands are being occupied. Such sanctions would also constrain local governments to better respect the peasants and would allow a fortiori the easing of social tensions in the countryside.