The legal response to the conflicts over land seizures and fair compensation has so far been quite insufficient. The Land Management Law requires such seizures to be in the "public interest" article 2 , and the Law on Land Contract in Rural Areas compels authorities to give a "fair compensation" to expropriated farmers article Yet, both laws are not sufficiently specific, leaving the door wide open for many types of local misuse. This is today probably the single most important problem for the social and economic sustainability of China's agricultural development.
On the opposite side, growing ecological concerns have encouraged authorities to take measures to protect soils, especially to mitigate agricultural land loss due to erosion and desertification. Data show that such concerns have a very real basis, for example, over the period , it is estimated that land resources degradation led to a net loss in agricultural land of From the beginning of the s onwards, important policies have been implemented to address this phenomenon.
The Water and Soil Conservation Law of prohibited the exploitation of land with a slope above 25 degrees. The NFPP has led to an increase of 1. Contrary to the NFPP, household participation in the SLCP is voluntary, and farmers who convert plots to forest or grassland receive significant compensation. State compensation offered for the conversion of agricultural land to forest or farmland, mainly through the SLCP, is also significant, high enough to attract the voluntary consent of over 32 million households between the years to Qu et al.
Results have been satisfying: nine million hectares had been converted under the SLCP by the end of The ecological results have also been encouraging, erosion has been reduced, soil quality has increased and water resources have been protected. However, this success comes at the cost of an increasing pressure on agricultural soils, as plots are reconverted to forest and grassland.
Decreasing farmland and state reaction Industrial and urban development, along with programmes motivated by ecological concerns, are together significantly increasing the pressure on land availability.
As land availability decreases, the value of land for non-agricultural, commercial or industrial use rises. Studies based on the aforementioned satellite imagery concur with the notion that agricultural land is facing strong pressures.
Even though the overall area of farmland may not have decreased, this is only because agricultural areas have been shifted away from urban activities and moved onto less productive soils. In fact, studies Deng et al. However, many of the more recent studies Vendryes, show that the decrease in agricultural land area has accelerated since the beginning of the 21st century, despite the exploitation of new resources in marginal agricultural regions.
It is therefore likely that future losses in land quality will no longer be compensated by increases in quantity. Due to concerns regarding this issue, in the mids Chinese authorities initiated a policy of farmland protection to limit the decrease in exploited arable land acreage Vendryes, In , the Regulations on the Protection of Basic Farmland aimed to identify "basic farmland", i.
In , the scope of these regulations was extended to include all farmland under the revised Land Management Law, which set a compulsory objective of no net decrease in farmland. Finally, in the Ministry of Land and Resources set a minimum limit for arable land in China of 1. However, in terms of actual land resources, China is already edging dangerously close to this "red line". Agricultural production today During the nineteenth century, China experienced famines and food crises at such a regular frequency that geographers in the s named it the "land of famine" Mallory, One century later, China seems far removed from such a description.
Nevertheless, food provision and grain self-sufficiency in particular remain national priorities. The Chinese government has constantly stressed that the country should be independent of world markets as regards feeding its population, an intention that was underlined once again in March , when China's Vice Premier Hui Liangyu stated that China was to uphold its policy of food self-sufficiency.
As a result, there is still much emphasis on grain production, as illustrated in the following graph. With this political willpower, China has just about been able to achieve a limited degree of self-sufficiency United States International Trade Commission, However, following WTO accession in , China was obliged to open up its agricultural market to a certain extent United States International Trade Commission, , and since then the level of liberalization has increased significantly.
Trading has, unsurprisingly, followed the law of comparative advantage: the two following graphs show that China, which has plenty of labour but limited land resources, has imported land-intensive products e. The only exception to this general pattern is grain, the trade of which is strictly controlled due to the political pressure for self-sufficiency. Grain imports therefore remain highly dependent on government policies.
This rise in imports may be partially explained by low international prices, but other factors such as China's growing hog industry are also responsible. Challenges ahead Agriculture has to address the conflicting objectives of productivity increase and environmental protection. As China's income per capita continues to grow, food consumption patterns are changing and the demand for meat and fish is rising.
In , average meat consumption per capita was 20 kg per year Fuller, Tuan and Wailes, , by the early s this figure had reached This shift in demand also increases the need for grain and water for livestock, challenging the goal of food self-sufficiency and increasing the already intense pressure on water resources Naughton, This was illustrated by the first national pollution census in , which took agricultural effluents and landfill discharges into account for the first time, thus revealing that rural contamination.
Water shortages and pollution incidents raise questions about the enforcement of environmental regulations, the tensions between different government levels and, more generally, the fight against corruption.
Similar issues arise in the food industry, which in recent years has seen a multiplication of contamination scandals Ni and Zeng, The most dramatic example occurred in when melamine added to milk caused , children to be taken ill, resulting in six deaths. Stricter policies were adopted in the aftermath: in May a directive from the Supreme Court sanctioned the use of the death penalty in contaminated food cases involving fatalities.
Nevertheless, more efficient quality checks are called for, especially as official restrictions on media coverage further complicate the disclosure of health scandals. China's increased demand for land and water is certain to raise many geopolitical questions, with worldwide implications for the future.
There are at least three main issues that are likely to feature on the global agenda: China's extension of its land area by buying agricultural land abroad, particularly in Africa; the potential impact on world water resources due to China's increasing meat consumption in China was already the number one importer of virtual water Chenoweth, , i. Export of agricultural labour Chinese agricultural exports consist primarily of labour-intensive products, such as: preserves, prepared food and processed products.
Show Media. Reducing land use through imports The main agricultural products imported by China are those that require the mobilization of extensive farmland, including: soybean and its products, palm oil, cotton, rapeseed and livestock products. Indeed, nationally owned land is reserved for cereal production. FR EN. Land, peasants and migrants: the heart of China's development Date: Topics: Development and equity. Regions: China. Download PDF 6. Article Index. China's agriculture: geography, history and….
Tensions over agricultural land. Current agricultural production and the…. Export of agricultural labour. Reducing land use through imports. There is much debate about whether China's farmers were "immiserated" in this period, that is, if they faced worse conditions than in previous times. But, as the first reading on raising silkworms demonstrates, without greater technological inputs, just working harder was not always enough to stave off privation.
Addressing the problems of the farmers was a major challenge for Chinese leaders. The short story, by Mao Dun Shen Yanbing, , entitled "Spring Silkworms," also demonstrates a greater awareness, on the part of a new breed of politically engaged and socially conscious urban writers in the s and s, of the plight of people in the countryside. Traditional Marxist thinking relegated peasants to a class which Marx believed represented "barbarism within civilization" — people who were unable to develop revolutionary consciousness and only wanted land and bread food.
During the Russian Revolution, Lenin revised Marx's view, assigning peasants a more supporting revolutionary role, although he still believed that it was the urban working class which initiated revolution. In the s, Chinese leftists began to change their view of the revolutionary potential of the rural population.
Then there are the costs of water, advertising, transport. But depending on the market, the vines might only sell for 4 yuan. Interview, Jindong District, Zhejiang, 17 May Migrant agricultural specialists grafting grape vines, Zhejiang photo by Sally Sargeson. This vision centred on expanding the scale of production by promoting land rental, and the capitalization and commercialization of production.
In , the advertised annual rent for rice paddy in Zhejiang was between and yuan per mu per annum, while shrimp and crab ponds cost over 1, yuan per mu 51 per annum for a ten year lease.
According to my own estimates, by somewhere in the order of 88 million nongmin had lost farmland through expropriation, and government analysts indicated that between and , another 50 million more might be expropriated to make way for urban and infrastructure development.
And some of these people subsequently used the compensation they received for loss of their shares in the land, as well as lost land use rights, crops and other assets, to purchase urban apartments, social insurance, and small businesses.
Especially in areas of mass in-migration, such as the Pearl River and Yangtze deltas, many expropriated households did well from renting accommodation to rural migrant workers from other regions.
But in addition, many millions of expropriated nongmin were indeed dispossessed without adequate much less just compensation, and were forced to supplement their meagre state welfare payments by repairing appliances, selling trinkets, street sweeping and scavenging.
As agriculturalists of all types were incorporated into widening circuits of capital and commodities, more inputs were sourced from global and national corporations. The costs of patented hybrid seeds, fertilizers, pesticides, irrigation and greenhouse infrastructure and technical training rose. Increasingly, output also was sold on markets. Yan and Chen estimated that by , almost per cent of vegetables, cotton and fruit, and 85 per cent of all grains, were sold on the market.
Lucrative supply contracts were monopolized by large farmers who could market online, negotiate affordable transport costs and deliver regular bulk orders to major wholesalers. Urban governments bent on reconstruction closed down many wet markets that had accommodated small independent vendors and allocated the sites to supermarket chains. As a Zhejiang farmer providing trees to urban landscapers in Shanghai, Henan and Jiangxi complained to me,.
We only get paid by the wholesalers once each year, after the spring festival. A year or so ago, one of the local wholesalers ran off owing us growers hundreds of thousands of yuan. We often get screwed.
If trees die on the way to market, they return them to us, so we bear the risk of transport and storage too. Factor and produce markets differentiated commercial and peasant producers even in less developed provinces. In one mountainous village in Yunnan, in a poor farmer explained to me how market prices swayed his production decisions:. But the price for pork is really low now.
We only get 11 yuan per kilo, but it costs us over 10 yuan per kilo just to raise them. Interview, Zhanyi County, Yunnan, 7 April In short, the expansion of markets not only greatly reduced the proportion of agriculturalists that could be identified occupationally as peasant farmers, but structured competition among agriculturalists and disadvantaged peasants in their relations with capitalist farmers, businesses and the financial sector. Largely as a consequence of reduced fertility, out-migration and family division, rural households declined in size, from an average of 5.
Certainly, when employed, migrant workers remitted money to their village families to support consumption and pay for new housing, education, medical care, and ceremonies associated with marriages, births and deaths. As most migrant workers lacked portable medical and unemployment insurance until recently, however, their only option in the event of illness, injury or being laid off was to return to their villages.
Peasant community solidarity also weakened as a result of educational and governance reforms. Consider the following two trends. Until , the vast majority of rural children attended primary schools in their home villages. Widely criticised for their inadequate resources and low educational standards, village schools nonetheless allowed children to interact with other members of their community, learn about local politics and customs and pick up rudimentary agricultural and house-holding skills.
The closure of , village primary schools and more than 16, middle schools between and resulted in a surge in the numbers of rural children either boarding in, or travelling more than ten kilometres daily to centralised schools in towns and cities. Children from entrepreneurial and commercial farming households gained in confidence, and proceeded to vocational and higher education. Second, peasant farmers became a minority in village populations — a minority increasingly marginalised in community governance.
Legally, registration as a village resident entitles all adults to vote in village elections and assemblies, apply for contracts to farm land and for a house site, and receive a share of any dividends paid from collective income. However, in developed areas, non-peasant village residents including commercial farmers, business people and off-farm workers began to outnumber, and outvote, peasants. Village voters began electing people to the two key leadership posts, Village Party Secretary and Village Director, precisely because of their expertise, connections and economic success in the all-important non-agricultural realms of business.
In Zhejiang, by entrepreneurs held leadership positions in around two-thirds of villages; 64 in the sixteen Zhejiang villages I visited in and , all but four of the 32 leadership positions were held either by business people or by commercial farmers. Even in less-developed provinces such as Yunnan, village leaders tended to be more highly educated and involved in business than most residents. One of the consequences of the changing occupational profile of village residents, therefore, was that the preferences of the minority peasant population often were subordinated to the preferences of the non-peasant majority.
Lower levels of government prioritised the development of industry, commerce or rural tourism over agriculture. Within the agricultural domain, they prioritised commercial agriculture over subsistence agriculture.
Indeed, Trappel 65 demonstrates that the commodification of farmland and commercialization of agricultural production and distribution became key criteria against which the performance of local government authorities were evaluated by their superiors. Governments dictated that land be used for commercial crops such as tobacco, which generated substantial government revenue but depleted the soil of nutrients if grown perennially, without rotation of legume crops , or produce such as mushrooms that appealed to urban consumers, rather than promoting crops that would sustain peasant livelihoods and support household consumption.
Cheng and Ngo, in , found that local government authorities pressured households that refused to produce preferred crops to rent their land to other growers. A government report in estimated that nationwide, more than 19 per cent of arable land was seriously polluted. Local governments and village leaders attempted to reduce the resulting conflicts among class-differentiated villagers, and among competing rural land users, to cultivate a sense of community by improving village services, encouraging the wealthy to donate money for festivities, and holding evening cultural activities.
But to date, these initiatives have had limited success in bridging divisions between the residual peasantry, and growing populations of off-farm and migrant workers, commercial farmers, and business people. In politics beyond the village, too, the peasantry was being substituted by, and therefore becoming a hidden, unrepresented subject among, the rural registered population. And in both organizations peasants came to comprise only a small percentage of the rural registered membership, which in turn was only a small proportion of total membership: according to one report, in only For not only is there a lack of agencies like cooperatives or producer associations to help link peasants to the market, but such collective organizations as do exist are in the hands of Party and government officials.
Rarely is it depicted as it was in the early Maoist era, as a source of social change or political agency. Even in scholarly discussions on class, peasants seemed to be disappearing.
For example, in the humanities and social sciences collections of the China Academic Journals database, between and only twenty nine journal articles combined the keywords class shehui jieji and nongmin. To be sure, people registered as rural residents continued to think of themselves, and were referred to by others as, nongmin , regardless of where they actually lived and how they made a living.
In sum, in the early 21 st century, far-reaching structural and systemic changes in the economy — many of which were initiated and propelled by the aspirations and activities of peasants — have commoditized agricultural labour, land, capital and produce, and turned peasants into a small, subterranean class among a highly variegated rural-registered population.
Rural cadres and entrepreneurs exercised political influence and accumulated wealth, which was flaunted in opulent housing, vehicles, weddings and banquets. As the expansion of markets allowed wealth to be parlayed into political, cultural and social capital, the children of these new rural rich began crossing class and hukou boundaries to join the urban middle class and bourgeoisie. The owners of businesses providing agricultural producers with machinery, bulk inputs and insurance and linking them with wholesale markets similarly worked, lived, socialized and intermarried with members of the middle class and bourgeoisie.
Especially in developed areas, commercial farmers routinely participated in property, labour and commodity markets and interacted socially with urban small business people, rather than the peasants they employed on a casual basis. A growing population of rural landless fragmented into rentier and self-employed members of the petit bourgeoisie, a reserve army of wage labour and welfare dependants. There are competing arguments among Chinese scholars about how this transformation of the peasantry is to be achieved.
By way of conclusion, then, here I outline alternative visions for the passing of the peasantry as a class in the early 21 st century.
It is a fundamental tenet of liberal thought that markets enhance individual freedoms. All legislation should first be revised and the mortgaging of rural land permitted.
Then within a decade, villagers should be granted full ownership rights.
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