Property rights in China
The brainstorming (see Check back in awhile on this) about how to make things better for China's farmers (still a majority of the population) has come up with a decidedly not-socialist idea.Chinese farmers could be allowed to sell land
"Thirty years after first setting out on the capitalist road, China's ruling Communist party has approved new proposals aimed at liberating 700 million peasants from state-owned land.
"The plans, passed at today's plenary session of the party central committee, could allow farmers to exchange or sell their plots or use them as collateral for loans.
"Experts hope the measures will boost rural incomes, improve productivity and help households to raise the money needed to move to cities...
"China's countryside was at the centre of the party's efforts to rejuvenate its sclerotic command economy in 1978, but the focus had shifted to the industrialised east within a decade...
"Meanwhile, the gap between the urban rich and the rural poor has continued to widen.
"The latest official statistics show that per capita city incomes are 3.3 times bigger than those in the countryside - the biggest difference since reforms began in 1978.
"As China shifts inexorably towards the "socialist market", the Communist party is continuing to try to reconcile the requirements of capitalism with the shibboleths of its Maoist past.
"Government figures have rejected talk of privatisation, and the new proposals will not formally break with the principles of collectivisation.
"Land will continue to belong to the state, but 'leases' introduced by reformers in 1978 could now be lengthened to 70 years, giving farmers far greater freedom over what to do with their land...
"However, the government's real priorities could lie elsewhere.
"'Hu Jintao, discussing land transfer problems, said that [the new measures] were aimed at achieving economies of scale,' Professor Xu Xianglin, of the Communist party school, said.
"That could cause problems. Sceptics are concerned that, without a functioning social safety net in the countryside, the new system will merely persuade indigent farmers to sell cheaply to big agricultural conglomerates.
"The number of landless farmers, already a growing problem, could multiply..."
Labels: China, economics, politics
posted by Ken Wedding @ 10:03 AM
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