Chinese Journal of Sociology

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The Logic in the Practice of “New Land Property Rights”: Theoretical Interpretation of the Land Disputes in STown, Hubei Province

Guo Liang, Law School of Huazhong University of Science and Technology.   

  1. Guo Liang, Law School of Huazhong University of Science and Technology.
  • Online:2012-03-20 Published:2012-03-20
  • Contact: Guo Liang, Law School of Huazhong University of Science and Technology. E-mail: guoliang2002002@sina.com
  • About author:Guo Liang, Law School of Huazhong University of Science and Technology.
  • Supported by:

    This paper was a result of project “The Research on the Causes, Characteristics and Solutions of Land Disputes in Rural Areas”（11YJCZH046），which was granted by Humanities and Social Research Youth Item of Ministry of Education, and of “The Research on Land Disputes after Tax Reform”（2011WC044）,which was granted by Innovation Fund of Huazhong University of Science and Technology,and of “The Research on Conflict of Land Rights in Transition”（IASFudanXSGZF10002），which was granted by Fudan Institute for Advanced Study in Social Sciences.

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Abstract:

In rural China, land property ownership is composed of two parts. One part is the ownership by the collective, and the other part is the land rental contract right by the farmers. Since 2000, changes and adjustments of the state’s laws and policies have expanded the farmers’ actual control over and utilization of land. In this context, land disputes over the land rental contract right have emerged in large quantities in rural villages. As the reality of STown in Hubei Province has shown, land possession patterns have experienced many changes in more than 50 years since the land reform, which means that the same piece of land usually has belonged to different owners in different historical periods. When the land rental contract right is yet to be determined once again and it is expected to be in effect for a long time, in their fight for their own benefits, farmers have activated their memories of land ownership and the traditional way of recognizing land’s ownership, which have become important rationales to obtain their land rental contracts. The traditional land system in the past 50 years has shaped the Chinese farmers’ cognitive structure to understand land property rights. Traditionally, it has been the state and the village communities to determine the rights to the land. Farmers’ understanding of land property rights is not based on contracts in the sense of modern market, but on the political and socioethical basis. Their arguments stem out of the right to inheritance, the right to survival, and the equality principle in land distribution. Although these reasons to defend one’s rights are no longer valid in the new land laws or policies, they were effective for a long time in the previous laws and policies. Furthermore, due to the extension of politics, they still represent their legitimacy in the socialist ideology. Thus, the conflicts between the traditional understanding of land distribution and the new land laws are an important trigger at the institutional level of the land disputes over land rental contracts. To a large extent, grassrootslevel governments are ineffective at resolving such conflicts as the conflicts are rooted in the inherent tension of farmers’ insisted reasoning based on the residuals of the past land system and the current land system. This indicates that, within the current political system, any reform of land property rights must consider the continuity between the ownership reform and the social system.

Key words: farmers’ cognitive structure about land ,   land disputes ,   new property rights