The Narratives Of Capital-Led Land Transfer

Capital-Led Land Transfer is a new strategy put forward by the Central Government of China for modernizing the agricultural sector. During the recent years, this kind of phenomenon has been spreading overwhelmingly in China’s vast countryside, which aroused wide concern. In this paper, we will take a typical Capital-Led Transfer event happened in an ordinary village in Sichuan Province for example. By collecting and analyze various narratives coming from all kinds of participants during the process, I will investigate the differentiation among those narratives, and explore respective narrative logic further. Then I will illustrate the relationship framework supporting the Capital-Len Land Transfer pattern. The study researched the conclusions as follows:(1) Capital-Led Land Transfer has the characteristics of short-time period, high-efficiency and large-scale areas, which is not determined by and unified in the grand narrative of state. At the practical level, various narratives reflecting the narrators’ livings and interests prove the multi-reasons for land Transfer.(2) Three kinds of relationships support the pattern of Capital-Led Land Transfer. First one is the relationship between farmers and state. The state-led developmentalism resulted in the contrast of weak farmers and powerful state, which explained the farmers’attitude of following the state completely. Second one is the relationship between farmers and local authorities. The local authorities make use of the discourse power and put farmers into the discourse framework of regional development and collective interests to deprive of farmers’ reasonable basis of resisting. Third one is the relationship between capitals (or capital owners) and local authorities. The authorities’ influences on Capital-Led Land Transfer show the model of "dumbbell type", which means the county government and village committee council play more important roles than the town government during the process.(3) A noteworthy result tendency:farmers’ proletarianization. The capital can control the whole regional land and labors after finishing the land Transfer. Under the monopoly, farmers are expected to lose their social and political powers.