Industrialization、Discretion、Cognition—Some Cases Of Community Joint-Stock System Reform

Community joint-stock system Reform is considered another innovation following “household responsibility system” in the field of the rural collective property rights in rural China. By investigation, the author discovered that there are many differences, which includes the core principles of quantifying the shares of the collective assets and the diversity degree of the reform scheme, among regions in reform schemes. The past researches suggest that the definition of property rights is a multiparty interaction based on actors’ society cognition. From the discretion village council owned and the society cognition to collective assets, the author analyzed their impacts to those differences. More specifically, the impacts include two aspects.As an important component of the public sector, the collective economic organizations embedded in China’s bureaucratic structure. The interaction among local government, village council and the villagers is affected by the power structure. As the intermediary between the local government and the villagers, the village council’s behaviors is one of the key factors which influence the reform of the rural collective property rights. The broader degree of discretion they have, the higher level of reform program diversity will be shown in one region, which is just like in Guangzhou and Shenzhen. And vice versa. Furthermore, the allocation of the landdevelopment-right between the local government and village council is the greatest factor influencing the degree of the discretion the village council have.On the other hand, the reform of the community joint-stock system involves the society cognition to the collective assets also, which can affect the core principles of quantifying the shares of the collective assets directly.The author abstracted three ideal types of the core principles from some regions in China. “God-Given-Village-Membership” is the main principle throughout the reform schemes of the villages in Guangzhou and Shenzhen. But in some areas of Zhenjiang, people there believe “Elements Creation”. Unlike these two types, many in Jinshan District Shanghai already accept the notion named “Labor Creation”. Suburb villages’ economic boom based on the land property rights institution. What’s certain is that there are some certain relationships between the cognition to the collective land and the cognition to the collective assets.Far away from the political center, the traditional lineage composition in south China have been preserved cause the social structure was less affected by a series of cataclysmic social and political movements than other regions in China after the founding of People’s Republic of China. The land is seen as the inheritance handled down from their ancestors. In this conception, the collective assets should be allocated by their village membership. As this, the character of the reform scheme in Guangzhou and Shenzhen is “God-Given-Village-Membership”.In Zhejiang Province, not only the distribution system in NM village but also the fundamental principle which was made from top down by the local government, the founding time of the Collective Economic organization was perceived from the reform of household responsibility system, in which the land property rights as private property rights were agreed on indirectly. The right of operation and contracting were emphasized from that time. People here value the character of the private property rights of the land more than others.From the case of Jinshan District Shanghai, frequent village relocation and combination, land readjustment shaped the cognition of collective land ownership or state land ownership. Villagers have low awareness of private land ownership. For this, the collectivism distribution fulfilled in the reform design.