| Rural-urban land conversion was a universal phenomenon in the social and economic development of China. It had brought profound impacts on many interest groups' welfare. Many interest groups were affected directly, including farm families, farmers' collective, local authorities and central government. This paper selected farmers" collective as the study object, aiming to reveal its welfare change in rural-urban land conversion and the reasons, through theoretical analysis and empirical research. My purpose was to explore the necessary and sufficient conditions to keep farmer collective's welfare balanced, as well as providing some policy recommendations for the reform of rural-urban land conversion system and improvement of farmers collective's welfare.With the rapid development of industrialization and urbanization, a large number of lands owned by peasant collectives originally were conversed to national construction land in urban area. This conversion led to a peasant collective's land property damage. By existing legal constraints, expropriation was the only legal way to converse rural land to urban. Even though the law stipulated that government and urban land users must give some compensation to impose farmer collective's land, the irrationality of the compensation principle and the compensation amount calculating method result in the land expropriation compensation could not compensate for the land property loss of farmers collective. The property and income (i.e., land acquisition compensation) were both important components of economic welfare of farmers collective, but also constituted the basis of other benefits. So the current rural-urban land conversion (acquisition as the main mode) caused the loss of farmer collective's welfare inevitably. For concerns about the future of life and the current upward pressure on cost of living, farmers expressed strong dissatisfaction on the current land acquisition and compensation, and even collective petitions and "violent anti-sign" events. At the same time, due to the vague of farmers collective's land property rights and own shortcomings of farmers collective economic organization, the villagers' committee seized the exercise of the collective land ownership right and the dominance of land acquisition compensation. In the distribution of land acquisition compensation, there were unfairness and inequality between rights and obligations at most time, which led to a certain degree of loss of peasant family's benefits (both objective and subjective welfare) and result in a decline in the level of collective welfare of farmers.This paper was based on the theory and research methods of welfare economics and economics of property rights, combing with the social contract theory, social organization theory, and theory of land expropriation compensation. Research methods included inductive and deductive research, survey research, literature synthesis and balanced analysis methods. In the study, I paid attention to the combination of qualitative research and quantitative research, normative and empirical research. In addition, law and economics research method is used throughout the paper.Paper was divided into eight chapters, excepting the first chapter (introduction), the second chapter (the theoretical basis), and the eighth chapter (conclusions and discussion), the remaining five chapters were the main body of this article. The third chapter analyzed the impacts of rural-urban land conversion on the farmers'collective's welfare theoretically. First, I made a summary of China's current rural-urban land conversion, defined the collective welfare of farmers, and introduced the measuring methods of collective welfare of farmers. And then I put forward that researching the issues of the collective welfare of farmers in rural-urban land conversion, must be from both aspects of the external welfare loss and compensation for farmers collective and the welfare distribution within farmers collective.The fourth chapter researched the external welfare loss and compensation for farmers collective in rural-urban land conversion mainly. I proposed to regard farmers collective as a homogeneous entity, and use economic welfare (Such as peasant collective's land property and income which are can be measured in monetary) to take the place of the overall well-being of farmers collective approximately. On this basis, I established a framework of balanced analysis of farmers collective's welfare and made a empirical test using the statistical data of the country and the city of Wuhan. The result showed that the farmers collective's welfare in current rural-urban land conversion was on unbalanced state, i.e., the compensation received by farmers collective was not enough to offset the welfare loss of their land property loss. I proposed that we should implement "full compensation" principle in land expropriation, change the calculating method of compensation for land expropriation, and improve the land requisition compensation standards further. At the same time, government should Increase the investment in infrastructure in rural areas, expanse the employment of landless peasants and take other measures to reduce the invisible welfare losses of farmers. In addition, this chapter discussed the issue of agricultural land development right, proposed that giving agricultural land development right to farmers collective was in line with the socialist equal and fair principle, and also was a necessary requirement of establishing a modern property rights system.Chapter V focused on the study of welfare distribution within farmers collective and its impacts on collective welfare of farmers. First, I proposed that the internal revenue (i.e., land requisition compensation fees) distribution is the core of allocation of farmers collective welfare, then described the two mechanisms of distribution of income affecting farmers collective welfare:First, the law of diminishing marginal utility existed objectively, and second, it's the reaction of "mental comparisons" to the unequal distribution of income. And then on the basis of summing up the research results about the problem of fairness and justice at home and abroad, I demonstrated the multidimensional nature of inequality. Then I pointed out that income inequality within farmers collective was just an outward expression, and the inequality of right was the origin. We must reveal the underlying causes of income inequality from the perspective of the right inequality. In rural-urban land conversion, the precondition of welfare optimization within farmers collective was to protect the farm families' right to participate in public affairs, income rights and the right of autonomy. Finally. I introduced "consent agreement" concept and regarded it as a necessary condition to realize the welfare optimization within farmers collective, and outlined a general process of achieving consent agreement by "consensus decision".On the base of previous chapters. Chapterâ…¥analyzed the causes that bring the damage of farmers'collective's welfare, focusing on the definition, operation and protection of farmers collective's land property rights. First of all, I made an overall analysis on the change of collective welfare of farmers in rural-urban land conversion, combing with relevant statistical data and field survey results of this project. The results showed:(1) the welfare compensation received by farmers collective was insufficient to cover its Welfare loss in rural-urban land conversion, (2) farmers' satisfaction level on compensation for land acquisition and its distribution was generally low, indicating that the subjective welfare loss of farmers collective was serious, (3) the direction and extent of the Impacts of rural-urban land conversion on the regional social, economic, ecological condition and farmers family life were different, but negative effects were more than positive effects on the whole. Then, I revealed the reasons that caused the damage to the collective welfare of farmers from the erosion of farmers collective's property rights by rural-urban land conversion and the inequality of income distribution within the farmers collective. The results showed that government's administrative power suppressing farmers collective's rights and farmer families' lack of rights were the deep-seated reasons causing the damage to the collective welfare of farmers.Chapterâ…¦put upward the long-term strategy and realistic way to improve the collective welfare of farmers, aiming at the status quo and root cause of the damage to the collective welfare of farmers in rural-urban land conversion in current China. In the further development trend, long-term strategies to improve collective welfare of farmers included:(1) establishing a new rural-urban land conversion model to make the whole farmers collective's welfare balanced; (2) prohibiting the erosion of collective and private property rights by executive power and improve the rural legal aid system to protect the legitimate rights and interests of farmers collective and farm families effectively; (3) strengthenning the protection of the right to land contractual management, to prevent the collective infracting individual rights and interests; (4) reformming the collective economic organization of farmers (to establish a kind of joint-stock collective economic organization of farmers), and straightenning out the relationship of property rights within the farmers collective and define peasant families'rights and interests clearly, to achieve a fair and equitable income distribution within the collective of farmers. In the short term, the main realistic ways to improve the collective welfare of farmers were as follows:(1) to heighten the standards of land acquisition compensation and compensate farmers collective for the loss of land property fully; (2) to regulate the income distribution within the collective of farmers and strengthen protection of land rights of farmer families; (3) to establish the basic social security system in rural area.The possible innovation of this paper was as follows:(1)I made clear the definition of the concept on the "collective welfare of farmers" for the first time, put forward three concepts of collective welfare of farmers with different connotations and pointed out these concepts can be used selectively in different research areas, as well I researched the measuring methods of the collective welfare of farmers with different connotation. (2) I established a framework of equilibrium analysis on collective welfare of farmers, and then researched the conditions that could make the collective welfare of farmers balanced in both cases:rural land development right was owned by farmers collective and rural land development right was not owned by farmers collective. On this basis, I proposed a new mode of rual-ruban land conversion. (3)I introduced the "consent agreement" concept into farmers' collective internal income distribution and proposed that consent agreement on internal income distribution of farmers collective was the second necessary condition for the optimization of the collective welfare of farmers. The paper pointed out autonomy of peasant families must be protected fully and the implementation of consensus decision-making was the way to realize the consent agreement on internal income distribution.
|
PDF Full Text Request