政治学与行政学毕业论文中英文资料外文翻译文献.doc

毕业论文
外文文献及译文

专 业： 政治学与行政学

外文文献
The impact of land transfer on peasant stratification
--An analysis based on a survey of Jingshan country, Hubei province
Abstract:
Peasants’ motivation and purpose for transferring land vary from time to time. Based on a survey of 10 villages in Jingshan county, Hunan province, this article finds that the specificforms of rural land transfer include active long-term transfer, passive long-term transfer and short-term transfer. Land transfer has an important impact on the stratification of the peasantry. Present institutional arrangements for land ignore the legitimate interests of migrant families and poor and weak villagers and therefore they hold different attitudes toward land tenure institutions than middle peasants do. Based on the conclusions of an empirical analysis, this article puts forward a series of policy recommendations aimed at protecting the land rights of poor and weak peasant households.
Keywords: land transfer, stratum, peasant stratification, land tenure arrangement
Land transfer is the focus of current debates on the institutional change of land. Many scholarshave conducted research on the forms, causes and implications of land transfer and havecome upwith measures and countermeasures to standardize the transfer of land. Special attention has beenpaid to the role of land transfer in agrarian restructuring, industrialization, moderate-scale
operation, rural labor transfer and peasant income enhancement. However, such studies rarely
involve land’s impact on changes in the hierarchical structure of current rural China. Chen
Chengwen and Luo Zhongyong (2006) focus on dissecting the overall rural structure and
examining the role of land transfer in reconstructing the rural social structure. Some scholars argue
that deregulating the transfer of land will lead to polarization among the peasantry (Wen Tiejun,
2008; Li Changping, 2008), but such an argument is merely a macrojudgment without factual
support at the micro level. China is a huge country with uneven development in rural areas;
peasant stratification is anything but a strange phenomenon. Therefore, we shall pay more
attention to observing the stratification of the peasantry at the micro level.
In classical Marxist theory, the institutional conditions of land are an important basis of class and
stratification. In the 1930s, Chen Hansheng, et al, proceeded with an observation of the land
tenure institutions and scientifically substantiated the feudal factor-driven class relations in rural
China and the semi-colonial and semi-feudal nature of rural Chinese society. In times of
revolution, Mao Zedong (1982, 1991) also singled out the institutional conditions of land as an
important basis of class and stratification. He played a crucial role in understanding Chinese class
conditions at that time and justifying the necessity of launching a land revolution. After land
reform was launched in the People’s Republic of China, land no longer exerted a significant
impact on rural class stratification and hence scholars discussed the rural class structure mainly
based on occupational stratification (Lu Xueyi, 2002). After the agricultural tax was abolished,
farming generated a handsome income for peasants and the impact of land transfer on rural social
stratification and peasant stratification became increasingly pronounced. In September 2008, we
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conducted a survey of 10 villages in two township jurisdictions of Jingshan county, Hubei
province. Based on the qualitative interview and quantitative statistics, this article attempts to
discuss the impact of land transfer on the stratification of the peasantry.
I. The complex reality of land transfer
After introducing the household contract responsibility system, the ruling Communist Party and
government have enacted a series of policies aimed at permitting and encouraging the transfer of
land use rights within the term of contract while stabilizing rural land contract relations. The
central government has always intended to realize the transfer of land tenure rights according to
law and on a voluntary and compensatory basis and to effectively protect the rights and interests
of peasants. The reality is, however, very complicated. The motivation, purpose and method of
rural land transfer vary from time to time. The actual conditions also vary across rural China. In
Jingshan county,, land transfer has gone through three different stages:
The first stage began in the 1980s. During this period, peasants transferred land before seeking
jobs or doing business in cities. The transition to a market economy started early in Jingshan and
as a result, land transfer took place earlier here than elsewhere in rural areas of central and western
China.
The second stage started in the late 1980s. At this stage, peasant burden became increasingly
cumbersome. Many peasants were unable to bear the burden of the new levies and as a result, they
had no alternative but to transfer or abandon their farmland and search for jobs in urban areas. The
abandoned land was transferred under the stewardship of village collectives or committees. This
was a prevalent phenomenon during the period from the 1990s until 2004, the year in which the
agricultural tax was repealed.
The third stage began in 2004. After abolishing the agricultural tax in 2004, the state no longer
levied fees on peasants and instead offered them various subsidies. Farming gradually became
lucrative and the once-abandoned land suddenly became sought-after. In addition, there were
dramatic changes in the mode and state of land transfer. On one hand, peasants were less willing
to transfer land, and the proportion of land transferred was in decline. On the other hand, some
peasant households had to transfer their land because its size was too small to be profitable.
In the face of different situations, peasants transferred their land in one of the three modes:
1. Active long-term land transfer
Active long-term land transfer is when peasants choose to abandon contracted land in their home
villages after settling down in urban areas, or actively seek to transfer the contracted land because
they expect to settle down in urban areas. This form of land transfer existed from the 1980s
onward and after the agricultural tax was repealed. Among the 60 villagers who transferred a large
area of land in Caozhengong village, Jingshan county, 13 farmers transferred their land under this
method. Six of the 13 farmers went to cities without their spouses or became non-farmers (private
school teachers or temporary workers turned into full-time workers). The six villagers transferred
their land in a foolproof way, and they now are living a decent life. The other seven villagers
abandoned their land due to an optimistic judgment in their ability to work and live in urban areas.
Six of those seven villagers are making a living in urban areas, and one of them returned to the
countryside and bought a house and a plot of land in a village in an adjacent township. Among the
six villagers settling down in urban areas, four villagers live an affluent life and two villagers are
neither rich nor poor. Of the latter two villagers, one has bought a house with a tile roof in a town
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and makes a living by selling bean curd; the other makes a living by working in a barber shop.
When a peasant household actively transfers its land for a long period of time, the transferee is
naturally entitled to acquire the land for the mutually agreed-upon period of time.
2. Passive long-term land transfer
Peasant burden became increasingly heavy from the late 1980s to 2003, when the reform of the
tax and fee system was launched. Because grain prices were in decline and peasants lost money
tilling the land, many of them transferred their land without little consideration. Sometimes the
transferor even had to offer a subsidy of up to 300 yuan/mu to the transferee. Since taxes and fees
were levied on land, abandoning land meant leaving taxes and fees up in the air, so
grassroots-level governments forbade peasants from abandoning their land and forced them to pay
taxes and fees even if their land was untilled. This is what Li Changping (2002) called “farmers
have to till their land against (their) will when they actually wish to abandon it.” In this situation,
some peasant households transferred their houses and land together to non-native immigrants from
mountainous areas; some peasant households tried every means to move their registered
permanent residence elsewhere and even ended up becoming unregistered residents. Still more
peasant households preferred to just leave their land behind and go work and do business
elsewhere. Consequently, a vast expanse of land was abandoned in rural areas. Some villagers
asked their neighbors to care for the land, but the land changed hands soon after or was abandoned
anyway. When villagers abandoned their land and went to work elsewhere, the township and
village governments could not expect to collect taxes and fees, and as a result had to transfer the
abandoned land by every means.
The modes of land transfer conceived at township and village levels include “one land plot per
household” contract, low-price contract and change of land use. “One land plot per household”
contract means that in order to resolve land cultivation and irrigation issues, the village collective
or committee reallocated land and concentrated the land contracted to each peasant household in
one single plot of land to facilitate construction of small water conservancy facilities (He Xuefeng
et al, 2003), thus making it more attractive for peasants to take over the contracted land. Low price
contract occurred when the village collective or committee transferred the abandoned land at a
price lower than the regular tax and fee burden. In this situation, village cadres often hold an
attitude of “collecting a penny of tax and fee is better than collecting nothing.” Change of land use
means changing the farmland use to attract villagers to contract it. For instance, hillside land can
be contracted to grow hybrid poplars; low-lying wetland can be used to dig a pond and raise fish.
Under the orchestration of village collectives and with every endeavor of village cadres, the
peasants who abandoned their land are able to transfer the land to those who are willing to acquire
it.
When the first-round land contract expired in 1997, the central government required each province
to conduct a second round of land contracting. Peasants were not enthusiastic about the
second-round contract because the farm tax and fee burden was too heavy and consequently, the
cadres of many local areas, including those of Jingshan county, had no alternative but to make the
second-round contract a mere formality. After the agricultural tax was repealed in 2004, farming
became lucrative and many villagers returned home and asked for land, thereby unleashing a
series of disagreements with the villagers who stayed in the farmland. The peasants who returned
home were lawfully entitled to the farmland contracting rights, whereas the peasant households
who stayed in the farmland had entered into contracts with village committees. The two parties
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struggled in disagreement against each other, and the township and village cadres could not think
of an effective way to overcome the impasse. In this situation, Hubei province issued Opinions on
Improving the Second Round of Rural Land Contracting in November 2004 to “reconfirm land
rights” in rural areas. This policy document made it possible to solve land disputes through
compromise by adopting flexible measures under the condition of preserving the current status of
land tenure without breaking the law.
In practice, Jingshan county government handled land disputes by confirming land rights based on
the existing land tenure institutions but requiring large farm households to give up a small piece of
land (2 mu) to peasant households who had abandoned their land before the agricultural tax was
abolished. Disputes were very acute at that time, and township cadres stayed in villages to handle
the land issues. Even so, there were still 29 groups of Cao township villagers lodging petitions in
2005. Today some villagers who have received confirmation of land rights from the government
are still unable to get their land. In consequence, the villagers who did not promptly return home
and ask for land in 2005 are forced to relinquish all of their land for a long period of time; those
who promptly returned home and asked for land are also forced to relinquish a large proportion of
land for a long period of time (2 mu of land per person or 10 mu per household in Jingshan
county). Among the 60 households in Gongcun village that transferred their land, 47 households
fall under this category. Now 24 of the 47 households have become “landless peasants” in
non-suburban areas and three have become permanently “landless peasants” because they sold
their house and land together to non-native immigrants, thus losing eligibility for confirmation of
land rights. The other 23 households have received 2 mu of subsistence land. By contrast, the
peasants who acquired land through land transfer are unexpectedly entitled to long-term land
contracting rights due to policy and circumstance change.
3. Short-term land transfer
This is a prevalent land transfer method adopted by peasant households due to their expectation on
long-term land possession and a sense of insecurity for other methods of making a living. In the
rural areas of Jingshan, short-term land transfer is currently adopted by most peasant households
that acquired 2 mu of subsistence land through the confirmation of land rights in 2005. In
Production Team 1 of Gongcun village, there are 18 peasant households with contracted land at
the present time: Only 10 households till the land at home, while the other eight households have
only 2 mu of farmland each. These families transferred their land for a short period of time and
moved elsewhere to find employment. In Production Team 3 of the village, there are 25 peasant
households, of which 12 households moved their families elsewhere. Now five of the 12
households have transferred their subsistence land under the short-term scheme, but the other
seven households are without any subsistence land. Most of the peasant households that moved
elsewhere had left their home villages before the agricultural tax was repealed and transferred land
in a passive way. Now a large proportion of them have stronger demand for land and choose not to
transfer it for a long period of time because they are likely to return home to the land in the future.
By contrast, the peasants