Introduction to Colloquium on Women and Policy and Institutional Change in Rural China: Part II

Articles in the first part of this colloquium surveyed articulations between rural development policies, village politics and land reforms and women's capabilities in China's countryside. The second part of this colloquium focuses on policies and institutions affecting geographies of gendered power in China. Four articles detail the consequences for women, families and society of marriage migration and urbanization.     

Gender,Land and Local Heterogeneity

This paper aims to demonstrate that China's land policy and land law are altered in social interactions between different actors. Such social processes have led to the gendering of rural land tenure practices, but also a highly heterogeneous situation with regard to land tenure. This paper aims to demonstrate that the combined effect of marital relations, kinship, social network and low political representation of women in the community often results in the deprivation of women's land rights and many women are becoming landless. However, our field research shows that there are also cases where women are able to get access to land if they live in communities where land is still subject to redistribution or readjustment, or where women have political representation and gender-awareness training.     

Women's Political Participation in China: in whose interests elections?

This article takes up the issue of women's political participation in village committees in China. Of interest is the decline in and continuing low level of women's political participation in village governance structures in the reform period, and particularly following the widespread introduction of competitive village elections since 1988. The dominant explanation given for women's numerical under-representation in village committees, and in politics more generally, focuses on women's lack of self-confidence, which inhibits them from standing as candidates, and on the enduring drag of ‘feudal’ attitudes, which construct women as inferior to men, and therefore not capable of leadership. These two factors combined have in turn a material effect, as son-preference advantages boys in access to basic schooling, who thus, particularly in poorer rural areas, end up with higher levels of education, and greater opportunities in waged employment. The common solution adopted by the All-China Women's Federation (ACWF), China's largest women's organisation, lies in a two-pronged attack: first in the ideological realm, targeting men and women's sexist attitudes and concomitantly promoting a discourse of equality, and second, in the material realm by raising women's skills. It is argued here that this dominant text on women's under-representation in village committees masks a more complex conjuncture of variables that shape women's position in local politics. Social practices, economic structures, institutional norms and procedures, and political culture all prey on, revitalise and reproduce gendered notions of the appropriate place of women and men in political life.     

Married Women's Rights to Land in China's Traditional Farming Areas

Women's land rights are one of the major issues of the rural land contract in contemporary China. Married women in relatively developed rural areas and under marriage misfortune have elicited much academic and public attention. However, less attention has been devoted to studying married women in traditional farming areas where they are still relatively poor. This paper focuses on women's land rights in their maiden village in traditional farming areas, and shows, based on an analysis of a case study combined with a questionnaire survey, that married women's land rights tend to be retained in their parent village with the implementation of new policy and land contract laws, but that they have almost no rights in their maiden families after marriage, due to the influence of traditional marriage notions and customs. Given the situation of the political and legal framework, it is necessary to further probe, by reviewing past practice and experience, how to ensure women's rights through restricted and specific land readjustment, which may be a realistic and valid approach.     

China's land disposition system

This paper studies the present land disposition (requisition and acquisition) and land use rights transfer system in China with emphasis on its marketization and its institutional arrangement concerning the central state and the local government. China's current land property right system is first described. It finds that although the communist government gained full control over the Chinese Mainland in 1949, it had never constitutionalized the state ownership of land until December 1982. Since then, the State owns all urban (nonagricultural) land and the rural collectives jointly own agricultural land. Only the user rights of urban land are allowed to be transferred. China's land administration system, its historical evolution, and its institutional configuration are then studied. Institutional difficulties associated with this system are also discussed. This paper proceeds further to study China's land requisition approval system. The role of the local government in land transactions is also discussed. The rest of this paper inquires into the marketization of land transactions in China. Discussion on the trend of China's land market development, suggestions for its improvement and remarks for future studies conclude this paper.     

China's Agrarian Reform and the Privatization of Land: a contrarian view

Many reporters and scholars outside China advocate the privatization of land ownership in China as a necessary step for the transformation of China's agriculture system into a modern, large-scale, market-oriented and technology-intensive one. Chinese scholars advocating land privatization, for their part, typically argue that land privatization would better protect farmers’ rights and interests. We present a contrarian view to these calls for land privatization. Under China's current system of collective land ownership and individualized land use rights, agriculture has modernized rapidly in China in a way that has avoided privatization's many downsides. Land privatization, by contrast, would only exacerbate class inequality and social tension in rural China and further weaken farmers’ positions in dealing with more powerful actors. Through analyzing six dimensions of this issue—increasing investment in land and agricultural productivity, promoting scaled-up modern agriculture, protecting farmers’ land rights and preventing land grabs, enhancing rural livelihoods, and facilitating rural migrants’ integration into cities—we maintain that strengthening the current system is superior to privatizing rural land.     

The effects of China's rural industry on agricultural environment

Rural industry is the fastest growing sector in China's economy and made up 27.52% of the GNP in 1990. The development of rural industry not only enhances the peasants’ living standard, but also demonstrates the advantages and potential of a new ownership system. Along with the development of the rural industry, however, some serious environmental problems have emerged in the agriculture. Traditional agriculture and farmers are rapidly disappearing in the developed rural industrial areas. Due to some unique characteristics of rural industry, such as its wide distribution, small size and frequent production change, a set of new environmental problems have arisen. These problems threaten a vast area of China's best cropping land. Solving those problems is beyond the capacity of current agricultural and industrial policies, because these problems are directly related to China's political system. The author proposes a set of strategies and policies that, under the current political constraints, may mitigate the negative effects of rural industry on the agricultural environment.     

Grain Procurement,Tax Instrument and Peasant Burdens during China's Rural Transition

In this paper, we argue that China's grain procurement system as a major instrument in rural taxation survived the communes and lost its importance only gradually in recent years. However, as agricultural liberalization progressed, the traditional tax instruments of ‘tax deduction prior to grain procurement payment’ and implicit taxation through ‘price scissors’ gradually eroded. Under such a circumstance, local governments in agriculture-based regions resorted to informal fees collected directly from individual rural households while the more industrialized regions shifted to non-agricultural taxes that are less costly in terms of tax collection. Empirical evidence based on a large panel data set supports our hypotheses of rural taxation in China.     

One Regulatory State,Two Regulatory Regimes: understanding dual regimes in China's regulatory state building through food safety

As China proceeds with a process of urbanization unprecedented in human history, it maintains an urban-biased governance regime in many areas, including food safety regulation. Using secondary data and interviews with officials from the Changping district in Beijing, this article systematically defines the main characteristics of China's dual food safety regulation regimes, highlighting differences between urban and rural areas in four dimensions: policy structure, funding source, staff structure and resource allocation. This article also provides an explanatory framework to understand this dual regime's development and persistence from a neo-institutionalism perspective. Three main explanatory variables are advanced: historical legacy, dual incentive structures, and dual economic and industrial patterns. While China's urbanization process and governance structure, including the food safety regulatory regime, are not complete by Western standards, we emphasize this problem is best understood by examining China's unique socioeconomic and cultural context.     

城市化进程中失地农民就业的制约因素及其政策支持

本文描述了我国失地农民就业的现状,指出了制约失地农民就业的因素,如地方政府对失地农民就业重视不够,社会就业环境不利于失地农民就业,农村职业教育缺失、就业培训缺乏组织协调机制,对失地农民的补偿标准低、间接影响农民再就业等,并提出通过消除失地农民再就业的制度缺陷、为失地农民就业和创业提供各种资金支持、积极拓宽到非农产业就业的渠道、搞好就业培训工作、重视失地农民的就业保障等措施来解决失地农民就业问题。     

Approaches to Women and Development in Rural China

In this paper I analyze the language and concepts framing approaches taken by the Chinese women's movement to women and rural development. Until the late 1990s the language adopted by Chinese women's organizations concerned with rural development was quite different from that of development agencies elsewhere, but since that time it has become increasingly similar. In this paper I ask: to what extent did the earlier language of Chinese women's development activists point to understandings and practices that were different from those of the global development movement? And what might be the significance of the growing convergence between the two?     

Introduction: women and policy and institutional change in rural China

This is an introduction to the special section of articles that analyze the gendered modalities of policy and institutional change in rural China and examine how women are engaging with, and affected by, those changes. In two consecutive issues, eight articles examine changes in policies and institutions relating to rural development, village-level politics and property rights, marriage migration and urbanization. Through their individual case studies, the contributors elucidate how gender is integral to the conceptualization and implementation of policy and institutional changes in rural China; how those changes are altering the status, rights, resources, goals and arenas of action of different categories of rural women, thereby reinforcing or altering gendered constructs; and, finally, how women's actions are triggering further policy and institutional changes.     

Why Develop and Support Women's Organizations in Providing Legal Aid in China? Women's rights,women's organizations and legal aid in China

This article argues that women's organizations are central to legal aid for women in China. Chinese women would benefit if more women's legal aid organizations were developed and supported. There are currently too few such organizations, especially in rural areas. Their work challenges the public legal aid programme to develop a rights-based legal aid agenda to achieve greater gender equality through the protection of women's rights. They bring diverse women's perspectives which counter prevailing traditional patriarchal attitudes and male dominance in Chinese society. The emergence of autonomous women's organizations is also important because it helped to break the monopoly of the All China Women's Federation over women's perspectives, identities and interests in China. The article concludes that the competitive yet collaborative relationship between autonomous women's legal aid organizations and the All China Women's Federation is producing a definite and positive impact on gender equality through legal reform.     

论西部农业现代化与农村土地流转

推进西部地区的农业现代化,破解二元经济结构,促进城乡协调发展是西部大开发的重要目标。加快农村土地流转,实现农业生产适度规模经营是西部农业现代化的重要前提条件。当前西部地区农村土地流转总体状况不理想,既有制度机制不健全、政府职能缺位等外部因素制约,也有非农就业比重低、生产效率低以及地块细碎等内部因素障碍。要从统一思想认识、加快基础设施建设、强化科技支撑、培育土地流转市场、发展各类专业合作社、规范政府管理、加强社会保障体系建设等方面入手加以整体推进,才能加快西部地区农村土地流转。     

农业现代化和新农村建设同步发展的“金穗模式”——广西隆安县那桐镇定江村定典屯的实践与探索

实现农业现代化与新型城镇化同步发展,进一步促进城乡发展加快融合,找到农民增收、农业增效的有效途径是中国各方一直在探索的问题。该文以广西定江村定典屯为例,提出以土地流转为核心,企业与村屯携手共建发展平台的“金穗模式”,即依托产业带动,村屯以土地流转形式帮助企业解决用地问题,企业帮助完善村屯基础设施,解决农民的就业出路,实现村屯变美、农民致富、企业发展的“三赢”局面。     

征迁前后农民生活方式对比研究——以合肥市长丰县某社区为例

城市发展、土地扩张导致大量农地的征迁,数量庞大的失地农民离开了农业生产开始寻求新的生活方式,由此带来户籍身份、聚居方式、经济来源以及工作方式、日常互动上的明显改变,但这种改变很大程度上只是外在形态上脱离了传统的农村生活,在内核上某小区目前仍旧是形变质不变,是对农村传统生活方式的一种复制,城乡之间巨大的鸿沟让他们游离于两种生活框架中,市民化进程任重道远。     

Organic Agriculture in China: do property rights matter?

Since the early 1990s, the Chinese government has been promoting organic agriculture as an alternative to the ‘conventional’ agriculture practised in the Chinese countryside. The latter uses increasingly large amounts of chemical fertilisers and pesticides and, as a result, threatens the environmental sustainability of the rural economy. Though absolute numbers of organic farmers remain small, there has been a dramatic increase in their rate of growth since 1995, aided and abetted by the work of the Chinese Organic Food Development Centre (OFDC) in Nanjing established in that year. In 2002, the OFDC gained full international accreditation and recognition, allowing Chinese organic products certified by it to be sold in lucrative markets throughout the world.

At the same time, there is a vigorous debate going on inside China regarding changes in property rights over land, with many scholars advocating full privatisation. This paper, through case study research, contributes to this debate in the context of the extension of organic farming in China. It examines current land rights arrangements in nine organic villages in different parts of the Chinese countryside to investigate whether they are conducive to organic agriculture expansion or hostile to it. On the basis of this research, it argues that the extant ‘partially privatised common property regime’ associated with the Household Responsibility System, when combined with appropriate collective arrangements amongst farmers, can be a satisfactory basis for the adoption of organic agriculture, particularly amongst China's poorest farmers. As a result, it concludes that the Chinese government should encourage those collective arrangements rather than risk new forms of instability as well as environmental unsustainability through wholesale land privatisation.     

中国农村发展与农村土地制度改革

农村土地制度改革是城镇化与农业现代化发展的客观要求。该文通过深入分析中国城镇化过程中的城乡土地利用格局,阐述了古今中外农村土地制度设计的基本原则,提出应有限度地放开农村土地市场,以满足利用市场机制有效配置土地资源的要求,但必须以保障农地生产功能为前提,严格防止土地过度资本化可能带来的弊端。     

Rural China and the WTO

China's entry into the World Trade Organization has been applauded for the benefits it will confer on China's economy and for granting recognition to China's modernizing efforts. The scrutiny of the outside world will force China to regularize many of its practices, such as legal and economic practices. But most of the discussion of the WTO has focused on a very limited segment of China's society. This article considers the realities of rural Chinese life, warning that the consequences of China's increased pressure to reform may be more negative than positive and that the prospect for rural China is far from clear.     

加快农村集体建设用地管理制度创新探析

伴随中国城镇化迅猛发展,大中城市周边集体建设用地已经成为城镇化的主要区域。全国各地的集体建设用地流转试验为新型城镇化背景下转变增长方式、完善土地管理机制提供了宝贵经验。该文在总结各地集体建设用地流转试验基础上,提出在大中城市周边区域率先建立统一的集体建设用地流转制度,促进城市周边区域经济社会统筹协调发展的目标,并就完善集体经济组织主体地位,发挥政府引导、协调、管理和监督职能,鼓励、扶持产业支撑,深化城镇社会保障和就业体制改革,加快公共服务均等化改革和城乡综合管理体制创新等问题提出具体建议。