Political Activity On Land

Around 1998, when the burden of agricultural production was heavy and food price is low, the state promoted "the second contract for land". S-town farmers living off the land for generations lost their passion for land management, and may abandon land at any time.To keep land taxes, the grass-roots regime had to promote a large area of land sub-contract, leading to instability in land contract relation. Lacking enough economic value,30-year fixed policy im land contract can not be accepted for the farmers.After the rural tax reform, the value of land increased. The state continued to reduce the institutional power enjoyed by the grass-roots regime, and then expanded rights owned by the farmers. So, the transformation of the rural land system has occurred since then. With land price rising, farmers have formed the awareness of land right,30-year fixed policy has became possible. However, there have been many disputes within S-town towards the determination of land ownership and distribution of the income at the same time.To some extent, the transformation of the rural land system which highlights the right of the individual leads to the occurrence of land ownership disputes. As the land contract relation has been declared unchanged for a long time, farmers actually believe that land will be privatized. As the fact that land contract relation changed frequently in history, Farmers can not reach a consensus on which time as a starting point for establishing a new "land ownership". In order to get more benefits, farmers resort to the historical facts that the production team owned the ownership of land in the people's commune system, which directly challenges the status of villagers committee as the representive of land ownership. In short, in the stimulus of interest, all kinds of old land systems have revived, in the form of the oral expression from farmers.In immerdiate need of governance, grass-roots regime isn't thr defender of the new property rights. In particular, in order to maintain of economic development and social stability, the grass-roots regime as stakeholders related to land, still have to achieve governance through the change of the land ownership. Under these circumstances, the farmers' claim for rights is not ususally supported by grass-roots regime, but are dissolved by the "ideology" of serving the overall interest.This shows that state must take account of the impact on land ownership due to farmers'original concept of land and the grass-roots government's practical governance. The transition of the land system can not rely solely on the building of the property rights, but a co-ordination between new contract of property rights and the social system which they are embedded in, including the reshaping of farmers' cognitive style on land and the improvement of the political environment. In the absence of the corresponding projects, any radical change of land policies is likely to lead to further social conflicts and disputes.