| Since reform and opening up, the economy of our country has always kept a faster pace of development, at the same time, the fast growth of the economy has led to great demand of the land, resulting in the rapid expansion of construction land, the declining of cultivated land, and giving a serious threat to China’s food security and ecological safety. To solve the contradiction between the current economic development and the protection of cultivated land, an important approach is the land consolidation. By the way of land consolidation, we can increase the area of effective cultivated land, raise the quality of cultivated land resources, improve agricultural production conditions, enhance the land production performance greatly, and promote the sustainable development of social economy in the country side. For a long time, Chinese government has paid great attention to land consolidation. By the end of2006, the Ministry of Land and Resources and the Ministry of Finance had arranged8batches of2320government invested projects. The construction scale of these projects reached to162.6×104hm2, and they also planned to increase37.3×104hm2arable land, whose total investment budget was297.9×109Yuan. Along with the advancement of land consolidation work, the contents of land consolidation has changed, rural land consolidation has rose to be the national level strategic plan, and become the important platform and tong to promote the new rural construction and balance urban and rural development. From2010, the central government has arranged26billion Yuan to carry forward the demonstration work of rural land consolidation integrally. In order to complete the400million mu Hanlaobaoshou high standard basic farmland construction tasks, China will invest600billion for new high standards basic farmland during the Twelveth Five-year Plans Period. However, with the rural land consolidation project implementation gradually deepening, its performance problems also gradually exposed. Rural land consolidation project surpasses its estimate cost, can not reach designed productive capacity, and lose after putting into operation, such problems have occurred occasionally. Therefore, carrying out the performance research of rural land consolidation project and setting up its framework system will have the theoretical and realistic significance on improving the level of investment decision and its construction effect, and promote its healthy development.On the basis of previous researches, this paper studies the theory and methodology of performance research of land consolidation projects, utilizing the model of combination of theoretical and empirical analysis, qualitative and quantitative analysis, with the support of principal-agent theory, incomplete contract theory, stakeholder theory, public goods theory, project governance theory. Besides, this paper also takes some land consolidation projects in Suzhou as examples to fulfill the empirical research. Specifically, this paper carries out the following contents:(1) The running process of rural land consolidation projects. From the point of view of public goods attributes of rural land consolidation, the paper analyzes the suppliers and organization process of rural land consolidation projects and discusses the principal-agent relationship, contract relationship during the period of the construction of rural land consolidation projects.(2) Analysis on the influencing factors for performance of rural land consolidation projects. Because both the internal factors and external circumstances would have an impact on the performance of rural land consolidation projects, this article analyzes the internal influencing factors for the performance of rural land consolidation projects from the three basic functions of governance of rural land consolidation projects and four basic functions of management of rural land consolidation projects respectively. What’s more, according to the operation of the rural land consolidation projects practice, this paper discusses that how the policy environment, market environment, economic environment, technical level, natural conditions of external factors would play the role in performance of rural land consolidation projects.(3) The measurement of performance of rural land consolidation projects. Firstly, the paper analyzes goals of performance measurement from main body of performance measurement; then, it builds a performance measurement system using the three-dimensional structure model and the logical framework; on the basis, the paper determines performance measurement index and methods of rural land consolidation projects.(4) The choice of the improvement path for performance of rural land consolidation projects. Combined with the public property and non-profit goal of rural land consolidation projects, the paper discusses the governance and management paths of rural land consolidation projects, with the former including internal governance and external governance and the latter mainly embodying improving organizations establishment, optimizing working procedures and strengthening management measures.(5) On the basis of previous researches on theories and methods, the paper would take several land consolidation projects in Suzhou as examples to diagnose the restriction factors of performance of rural land consolidation projects and discusses the selection of performance improvement paths of rural land consolidation projects.From the research above, some conclusions are drawn out as following:(1) The rural land consolidation has public goods attributes and mostly, governments invest in projects directly. There are three procedures in the government-leading rural land consolidation projects, such as decision-making process, implement process and operation process. In addition, the public, the government, the project owners, the contractors and other interest main bodies form a double multilevel principal-agent relationship, and further become an incomplete contract relationship, and then transform the temporary contract into a long-term contract through the "project portfolio".(2) The performance of rural land consolidation projects is affected by both internal factors and external factors. Some internal factors, such as rural land consolidation project management and rural land consolidation project governance, can be regulated in the construction process of rural land consolidation projects. However, the external factors, such as natural conditions, policy environment, market environment, technological level and economic environment, are difficult be changed arbitrarily by manpower within the construction period of a single rural land consolidation project.(3) The performance measurement subjects of rural land consolidation projects are core stakeholders including the government, the public as well as the community of the project areas. The measurement objectives are specifically divided into providing rural public goods and public services, satisfying social and public needs, maintaining society’ fairness and impartiality, improving socio-economic development environment, and enhancing living standards of the peasants. There are logical dimension, knowledge dimension and time dimension in the performance measurement of rural land consolidation projects, and the three aspects are respectively embodied as input, output, purpose and objective, and economy, efficiency, benefit, fairness and responsibility, and decision-making, implementation and operation. Thus, based on the Logical Framework approach, the paper has established the performance measurement system of rural land consolidation projects. On this basis, from such three aspects, including decision-making performance, implementation performance and operational performance, this article has constructed the performance measurement index system of rural land consolidation projects, which are divided into six aspects of measurement indices including decision-making process, construction scale, business performance, financial performance, results performance and affect performance. Further more, this thesis has established entropy-weighted extentic matter-element model of the performance measurement of rural land consolidation projects.(4) Carrying out internal governance of rural land consolidation projects, establishing Owners’Committee as well as supervisory committee of rural land consolidation projects, strengthening decision-making mechanism, supervisory mechanism and incentive mechanism, optimizing the agency relationship of rural land consolidation projects; strengthening market governance and environmental governance, perfecting market governance mechanism and government supervisory mechanism, the objectives of rural land consolidation projects effectively, coordinating the conflict of interests between the stakeholders, and improving the construction effects of rural land consolidation projects. Perfecting management institutions of the performance evaluation of rural land consolidation projects, regulating the procedures of performance evaluation as well as performance improvement of rural land consolidation projects, strengthening management measures such as multiple collaborative, management network of monitoring and early warning, dynamic regulatory, achievement application and feedback, further enhancing the four basic functions of rural land consolidation projects’ management, finally accomplishing the construction assignments of rural land consolidation projects effectively.(5) Since the implementation of land consolidation projects, the area of cultivated land resources was increased, the production capacity of cultivated land was enhanced, and farmers’income was increased in Suzhou city. There are three procedures in the rural land consolidation projects in Suzhou city, such as decision-making process, implement process and operation process, while a double multilevel principal-agent relationship was formd in the process, and further become an incomplete contract relationship, and then transform the temporary contract into a long-term contract through the "project portfolio". The policy environment and economic environment for land consolidation project are more favorable in Suzhou city, while market environment, technological level and natural conditions will be further improved. Land consolidation project did not implement the project legal person responsibility system, and the final management and maintenance of rural land consolidation is inadequate. The governance structure of land consolidation project has some flaws, and the governance mechanism is not perfect.(6) Overall, the performance levels of rural land consolidation projects in Suzhou City are various, even quite different. While two projects’ performance levels are "good", that of three projects are close to "good", and one project is close to "poor" level. The major constraints of performance of rural land consolidation projects include the lower vegetation cover, lower density of shelter forest, little improvement of the agricultural production conditions, and little increase of land utilization efficiency.Some suggestions are proposed to enhance the rural land consolidation project performance based on the conclusions above, such as optimizing the governance structure and governance mechanism of the rural land consolidation projects, strengthening the rural land consolidation project management, establishing rural land consolidation mode based on the landscape ecology, improving public participation mechanism of rural land consolidation, sounding final management and maintenance mechanism in the rural land consolidation project, and so on. |
PDF Full Text Request