On March 18, China issued a guideline for pilot programs for the extension of rural land contracts by another 30 years. China’s current rural land contract system, which replaced collectivized farming in the late 1970s and early 1980s, allocates publicly owned land to individual farming families. As the expiration of the current contracts is expected to hit its peak between 2026 and 2028, this 30-year extension will provide long-term certainty for these families and their communities, as well as ensuring stable agricultural output in the decades to come. 

Under the current system, known as the household contract responsibility system, land in a village is owned by the villagers collectively and parcels of farmland are allocated for use by individual households through contracts. The contracts were initially granted for 15 years in the 1980s and were renewed by 30 years in the late 1990s. 

To understand the importance of the decision to further extend the contracts, we need to start with how farmland is important to Chinese farmers. China has long been an agriculture-based country, with the vast majority of the population engaged in farming. However, under the feudal land ownership system, landlords, who constituted a very small minority of the population, owned most of the land, leaving the the vast majority of rural residents with only small amounts of land. Most peasants had to rent farmland from landlords to make a living, suffering from high rents. 

After the founding of the People’s Republic of China in 1949, a land reform movement was launched nationwide. The land of landlords was confiscated and redistributed to farmers who had no or very little land. This stimulated unprecedented production enthusiasm among Chinese farmers, and agricultural production increased. 

As these land reforms progressed, villagers began to develop cooperatives to promote mutual assistance in the early 1950s. By 1958, however, unrealistic expectations had fueled a people’s commune movement, transforming land ownership by individual farmers to collective ownership under unified management. Under this system, farmers lost the autonomy to manage their land. Rigid planning by the authorities reduced their motivation, resulting in stagnation in agricultural production. 

The turning point came in 1978, when Xiaogang Village in Anhui Province contracted land to individual farmers for management while maintaining collective ownership of the land, separating ownership from management rights. This rural reform directly addressed the problem that had previously dampened farmers’ enthusiasm, greatly improving agricultural productivity and solving food security issues within a short time, and being rapidly expanded nationwide. 

Since the household contract responsibility system was introduced in 1978, the healthy development of agriculture and rural areas has shown the path to be correct. China has achieved stable growth in the volume of grain harvests, with outputs reaching over 700 million tons in each of the past two years. 

China has now become a major industrial power, but the fundamental position of agriculture and the huge rural population remain unchanged. History has clearly demonstrated that extending the term of household land contracts is not only crucial to farmers’ vital interests, but also a key part in consolidating China’s agricultural foundation and advancing the rural revitalization. 

In addition to China’s Constitution stipulating public ownership of land, lessons from Chinese history highlight the risk of land privatization leading to wealth inequality. Public ownership of land is a principle pursued by Chinese socialism to achieve fairness and justice, and one of the most important fundamental factors for exploring the path to common prosperity. 

Copyedited by G.P. Wilson  

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Blurb 

Public ownership of land is a principle pursued by Chinese socialism to achieve fairness and justice