A Study On The System Of Legal Protection For The Interest Of The Land-losing Peasants

Historically, there have been a variety of reasons accounting for the land loss of the peasants, such as war, natural disasters, land annexation, expropriation, and land transfer, etc. In this paper, the land-losing peasant refers exclusively to those who lose their lands in the shift of ownership from the collective land to the state-owned land with the quickened tempo of urbanization against the backdrop of China's reform and opening. At present, statistics from China's Ministry of Agriculture and Development Research Center of the State Council show the peasant's land-losing problem in China is so severe that the non-agricultural land use has expanded to such an unprecedented extent that our peasants are losing their lands on which they live. It is estimated that by 2030 the population of China's land-losing peasants is expected to increase from today's 37 million to 110 million. On the whole, conflicts arising from the land expropriation have been so intensified that we can resort to nothing but the call for legislation. Any temporary, local or policy-related measures cannot eradicate the problem but ease the tension to some degree. Only when an all-sided system of legal protection for the interest of the land-losing peasants is introduced will the barbaric violence in relocation of habitants become a history. A considerable research, theses and works on this subject can be seen in domestic academic circles. This paper, under the present laws and institutions, tries to study, in a comprehensive way, the current situation of the land-losing peasants and their damaged interests from the perspectives of financial compensation rights, rights of participation in the economic decision-making process, rights of social security and rights of procedures and remedies. Furthermore, on the comparative study of land legislations and land expropriations among countries, a comprehensive analysis of the damaged interests of the land-losing peasants is made and an integrated systematical proposal concerning financial compensation rights, rights of participation in the economic decision-making process, rights of social security and rights of procedures and remedies is raised as well.