Egalitarian redistributions of agricultural land in China through community consensus: Findings from two surveys

China Journal

Volumn , Issue 69, 2013, Pages 1-19

  Kong, Sherry Tao ^a   Unger, Jonathan ^a  

^a NONE

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

AGRICULTURAL LAND; ECONOMIC ANALYSIS; ENVIRONMENTAL LEGISLATION; QUESTIONNAIRE SURVEY; RURAL AREA; RURAL DEVELOPMENT; RURAL ECONOMY; SURVEY;

ANHUI; CHINA;

EID: 84876530883     PISSN: 13249347     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: None     Document Type: Article

References (16)

1. Anhui has one of the largest rural populations in China (42 million in 1978 and 51 million in 2007), accounting for about 79 per cent of the province's population; the share of agriculture in the province's GDP averaged 34 per cent between 1978 and 2005, which is high compared to most provinces. Anhui tongji nianjian 2007 (2007 Anhui Statistical Yearbook) (Beijing: China Statistical Press, 2008).
2. James Raising Kung, "Equal Entitlement Versus Tenure Security under a Regime of Collective Property Rights: Peasants' Preference for Institutions in Post-Reform Chinese Agriculture", Journal of Comparative Economics, Vol. 21, No. 2(1995), pp. 82-111.
3. James Kung and Shouying Liu, "Farmers' Preferences Regarding Ownership and Land Tenure in Post-Mao China: Unexpected Evidence from Eight Counties", The China Journal, No. 38(July 1997), pp. 45-48.
4. Loren Brandt, Jikun Huang, Guo Li and Scott Rozelle, "Land Rights in China: Facts, Fictions and Issues", The China Journal, No. 47(January 2002), pp. 67-97. (Pubitemid 34143838)
5. "Dangqian nongcun tudi chengbao jingying guanli de xianzhuang ji wenti" (The Current Circumstances and Problems Facing the Administration and Management of Village Land Contracts), Zhongguo nongcun guancha (Chinese Village Observations), No. 5 (1988).
6. Jae Ho Chung, Central Control and Local Discretion in China (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000), p. 67.
7. Jonathan Unger, "The Decollectivization of the Chinese Countryside: A Survey of Twenty-eight Villages", Pacific Affairs, Vol. 58, No. 4(Winter 1985), pp. 585-606.
8. "Nongmin dui nongdi zhidu gaige de renzhi-jiyu Anhui sheng nonghu diaocha ziliao fenxi" (Farmers' Sense of the Agricultural Land System Reforms-Analyzing the Materials from a Survey of Anhui Province Farm Households), Zhongguo nongcun jingji (Chinese Rural Economy), No. 7(2005), p. 46. Similarly, in a 1994 questionnaire survey of 800 farm families in eight counties spread across China, only 14 per cent of the respondents declared that they preferred permanent land ownership rights to be held by each household. Sixty-five per cent favored periodic land reallocations to redistribute plots to families which had grown in size, and only 19 per cent were opposed. James Kung and Shouying Liu, "Farmers' Preferences Regarding Ownership and Land Tenure in Post-Mao China".
9. Zhonghua renmin gongheguo tudi guanlifa (xiuzheng) Land Management Law of the People's Republic of China [Revised]), August 1998.
10. The law was soon reinforced by a directive of the Party Central Committee, titled Zhongguo gongchandang di 15 jie zhongyang weiyuanhui di san ci quanti huiyi tongguo (Directive of the 3rd Meeting of the 15th Session of the Communist Party Central Committee), passed on 14 October 1998.
11. See, for example, Thomas P. Bernstein and Xiaobo Lü, Taxation Without Representation in Contemporary Rural China (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2003)
12. and Kevin J. O'Brien and Lianjiang Li, Rightful Resistance in Rural China (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006).
13. E. P. Thompson, "The Moral Economy of the English Crowd in the Eighteenth Century", Past and Present, Vol. 50, No. 1(1971), pp. 78-79: "... the men and women in the crowd were informed by the belief that they were defending traditional rights or customs; and in general, that they were supported by the consensus of the community... as to what were legitimate and what were illegitimate practices".
14. James C. Scott applied Thompson's thesis influentially to rural Asia in The Moral Economy of the Peasant (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1976).
15. For a different analysis of why some of the villages in a 2003 survey practiced complete reallocations of fields whereas some undertook small-scale reallocations, see James Kai-sing Kung and Ying Bai, "Induced Institutional Change or Transaction Costs? The Economic Logic of Land Reallocations in Chinese Agriculture" Journal of Development Studies, Vol. 47, No. 10(October 2011), pp. 1510-28. This 2003 survey agrees with our Anhui surveys findings that groups with complex topographies tend to favor small-scale reallocations.
16. A survey study analyzing land reallocation behavior in 10 provinces in China for the period 1986-99 similarly found that, where a large share of the able-bodied are engaged in off-farm work, the overall level of land reallocation had dropped sharply over time (James K. Kung, Justin Y. Lin and Shen Minggao, "Structural Change and the Evolution of Property Rights in Rural China", unpublished manuscript). A similar finding appears in Scott Rozelle and Guo Li, "Village Leaders and Land-Rights Formation in China", The American Economic Review, Vol. 88, No. 2(1998), p. 437.