New policy to transfer land-use rights a sign of deepening economic and social crisis
Mon, 6 Oct 2008, chinaworker.info reporters
During the holiday week, on 30 September, president Hu Jintao paid a symbolically loaded visit to a village in Anhui province, hailed as the spot where 30 years ago Deng Xiaoping’s decollectivisation policy took root. The dissolution of the Mao era communes in the early years of the 1980s marked the start of the turn towards capitalism by the ruling CCP.
The timing of this visit, before the third plenum of the 17th Central Committee of the CCP opens on October 9, is hardly accidental. Chinese leaders have a habit of launching new policy turns through the staging of such media happenings. While details remain sketchy at this stage, it seems that Hu and the central government want to open the way for China’s 730 million plus farmers to transfer their land-use rights to agricultural companies and other interested parties. “Farmers will be allowed to transfer land contract and management rights by various means, in accordance with their will,” Hu told the villagers in Xaiogang, according to the official Xinhua news agency.
What this really means is a policy of land privatisation. In China and some other Asian societies the land has been largely state-controlled for centuries – until the 1600s, the gentry only had the right to control and use the land under a system of imperial permits. Not surprisingly, therefore, this issue now dominates the debate on the internet (the only forum for public protest in China), with literally millions of postings in recent days. Most left commentators, but even some liberals, strongly oppose the proposal, with opinion online running roughly 60-40 against Hu’s proposal. While lefts condemn the idea as extreme neo-liberalism, some liberals argue that, while in principle they are in favour, it is too soon to privatise farmland because other measures – democratic rights, an independent judiciary, a more open market system and a social security net – must be put in place first. These liberal pro-capitalist commentators point to the mass privatisations of SOEs (state-owned enterprises), which led to most assets being embezzled by managers and state officials. Some ultra-left Maoists unbelievably ‘support’ the proposal, arguing in a very simplistic fashion that land privatisation will provoke revolution against the new landlord class within a matter of years.
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