Recently, the issue of rural contracted land withdrawal has once again become a hot topic.

　　The reason is that the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs, in response to the suggestions of deputies to the National People’s Congress, said that it would, in accordance with the requirements of the central authorities, guide local governments to clearly define the main qualifications of farmers who withdrew from contracted land and steadily explore the establishment of an exit mechanism for farmers’ contracted land.

　　The existing rural land contracting pattern was established in the "second round" of contracting in the 1990s. At that time, the urbanization rate of China was just over 30%, and the vast majority of the population was still tied to the land.

　　Today, the urbanization rate in China is close to 64%, and the share of agricultural employment has been reduced to below 25%. If we further consider the level of production concentration, among agricultural employees, professional farmers who account for less than 5% bear more than 50% of the production capacity, and this trend of production concentration is deepening day by day. A characteristic fact reflected by the above phenomenon is that the existing land contracting pattern has been seriously misplaced with the real land management pattern. This is the realistic basis for starting the reform of contracted land withdrawal for farmers in cities.

　　First, the policy process

　　The so-called withdrawal of rural contracted land essentially means the withdrawal of rural land contracting rights. This right is actually transformed from the membership right of rural collective economic organizations. Of the same nature, there are rural rights and interests such as rural homestead qualification rights and collective asset equity. The withdrawal of rural rights and interests such as rural land contract right is not a new policy, and this reform has been discussed for a long time.

　　In 2015, the Fifth Plenary Session of the Eighteenth Central Committee of the Communist Party of China made it clear that farmers who settled in cities should be protected from land contracting rights, homestead use rights and collective income distribution rights, and supported to guide them to voluntarily transfer the above rights and interests with compensation according to law.

　　In 2016, the reform of "separation of powers" of rural land was launched, and it was clearly stated that it was necessary to fully safeguard the rights of contracted farmers to use, transfer, mortgage and withdraw from contracted land.

　　The Rural Land Contract Law, revised in 2018, stipulates that during the contract period, if contracted farmers settle in cities, they will be guided and supported to transfer the contracted management right of land within their collective economic organizations or return the contracted management right to the employer according to the principle of voluntary compensation.

　　The newly revised Regulations on the Implementation of the Land Management Law in 2021 stipulates that the state allows rural villagers who have settled in cities to voluntarily withdraw from their homesteads with compensation according to law.

　　In addition to the above-mentioned policies and regulations, relevant departments have organized and carried out several rounds of reform pilots in many regions. In 2014, Chengdu, Sichuan Province, liangping county, Chongqing, and Shizhong District, Neijiang City, Sichuan Province in the second batch of rural reform pilot areas carried out the experiment of "voluntary paid withdrawal of rural land contractual management rights". In the following years, the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs successively organized some counties (urban areas) in Shanghai, Shandong, Ningxia, Hubei and other places to carry out the pilot project of withdrawing rural land contracting rights.

　　At the end of 2019, the National Development and Reform Commission and other 18 departments issued the "Reform Plan for the National Urban-Rural Integration Development Experimental Zone", which proposed to establish a system for farmers who settled in cities to voluntarily transfer and withdraw from rural rights and interests according to law, and explore specific measures for them to withdraw from rural collective economic organizations, such as farmers’ contracting rights, homestead qualifications and collective assets. Judging from this deployment, the "package" withdrawal of rural rights and interests will become an important trend of future reform.

　　Second, operational problems

　　It has been six years since the reform was put forward to a series of reform pilots, but this reform has not been fully solved. For example, the previous reform pilot projects in Chengdu, Sichuan, liangping county, Chongqing, and Shizhong District, Neijiang, Sichuan, were difficult to go deep for various reasons. There are three main problems:

　　(1) The "long-term withdrawal" mode is generally adopted in the pilot areas, rather than the "permanent withdrawal" mode.The so-called "long-term withdrawal" means that farmers are allowed to return the remaining term of the "second round" contract period to the village collective, but reserve the right to re-apply for contracted land in the next round of land contract. This reform idea has obvious limitations, leaving a tail for the parties to play again after the expiration of the "second round" contract, so it is not smooth to implement.

　　(2) In the pilot project, the land contracting right can only be returned to the village collective, and it is not allowed to be transferred between farmers.The direct result of this constraint is that it is difficult to raise compensation funds for land withdrawal. The compensation funds in various places are mainly based on financial advances, supplemented by self-financing by collective economic organizations and bank financing, which is not sustainable. This practice is still continued in the Reform Plan of the National Urban-Rural Integration Development Experimental Zone, that is, the withdrawal object of rural rights and interests can only be rural collectives, not including eligible members of other rural collective economic organizations. If this practice is continued without change, the funding problem will remain a key bottleneck, and I am afraid it will be difficult to make a breakthrough in reform.

　　(3) In the pilot, only the withdrawal of land contracting right was deployed, but no arrangement was made for the withdrawal of homestead qualification right and collective asset equity.This makes the reform that should have been promoted as a whole artificially separated. The "Reform Plan of National Urban-Rural Integration Development Experimental Zone" has improved this practice and made arrangements for the "package" withdrawal of rural rights and interests, but no mature experience has been seen yet.

　　Iii. Suggestions for reform

　　As mentioned earlier, behind the rural land contracting right, homestead qualification right and collective assets equity right is the membership right of rural collective economic organizations. From a deeper level, the withdrawal of the above rights is essentially the withdrawal of the membership rights of rural collective economic organizations, which involves the renewal of the inherent attributes of rural collective ownership. Because the current collective ownership of rural land belongs to "total ownership" in the framework of civil law, it is an inseparable, inseparable and irrevocable collective system in theory. However, we must know that the strict sense of "total ownership" is only applicable to the agricultural community in a simple society and it is difficult to adapt to the requirements of the modern economic system. Therefore, from the perspective of comprehensively promoting rural revitalization and accelerating agricultural and rural modernization, it is necessary to make adaptive changes to the rural collective economic system and establish a rural collective economic operation mechanism that meets the requirements of the market economy.

　　Only by clarifying this basic understanding can we break the ideological shackles of reform, thus fundamentally breaking the problem of rural rights and interests and withdrawing from reform.

　　Specific reform proposals include the following aspects:

　　(1) Boldly explore the mechanism of "permanent withdrawal" of rural rights and interests.In order to avoid the repeated game of land and contract relationship, farmers who settle in cities should be allowed to "permanently withdraw" from rural rights and interests voluntarily and with compensation according to law. In this process, the choice should be given to farmers, instead of taking it for granted that "farmers will sell their land at will", so they must "make decisions for the people". If it is really necessary to take certain measures, we can consider giving farmers a certain "right of repentance", that is, allowing farmers who have withdrawn from rural rights and interests to regain land contracting rights or other rights and interests at the original price within a certain period of time, of course, it may not be implemented on the original specific plots.

　　(2) Clarify the qualification scope of the rural rights and interests undertaker.According to the provisions of the Rural Land Contract Law, those who undertake to withdraw from the land contract right can be either the rural collective economic organizations to which farmers belong or other members of the collective economic organizations. From the point of view of legal logic consistency, the same is true of the qualification right of house foundation and the equity right of collective assets. However, in the pilot reform work, only the relevant rights are allowed to be returned to the village collective, but no "exit — The specific mechanism of undertaking means that legal provisions have actually become an "empty system". The Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs stressed that it is necessary to "clarify the subject qualification of farmers who withdraw from contracted land" when replying to the suggestions of NPC deputies. Actually, from the operational level of reform, it is equally important to "clarify the scope of the subject qualification".

　　(3) Establish a market-oriented framework for rural rights withdrawal reform.The reason why this reform is difficult to solve for a long time is that the government has a strong leading color and the marketization mechanism has not been established. In the next step of reform, we should design a scientific market-oriented framework to promote the "exit — To undertake the independent negotiation and negotiated pricing between subjects, the government mainly plays the role of guidance, supervision and guarantee. The experience of rural reform for more than 40 years shows that farmers will make rational choices under a market-oriented framework. This experience has become an irrefutable truth.

　　[The author Chen Ming is an associate researcher at the Institute of Political Science of China Academy of Social Sciences. His main research fields are rural governance, land system and rural reform. He has published Land Politics and Facing the Seed Problem in China (editor-in-chief). ]