| The current homestead system of our country is the product of historical evolution, and itis developed in the context of China’s socialist transformation of agriculture. This kind of freecharge, sharing, with welfare properties homestead system played an important role in ourcountry’s industrial development and the rural society stability. However, with the populationgrowth and economic development, particularly with the rapid advance of industrializationand urbanization, the land resources in rural areas are becoming more and scarcer; thepotential value of the homestead rises rapidly. As a result, the imbalance appears, thebehavior of unauthorized transferring farmland, even basic farmland into construction land tobuild small property room and holiday village happens a lot, farmers are compelled to moveinto buildings, and people appeal to the higher authorities in the land expropriation. On theother hand, due to the fact that the homestead system can not meet the requirements ofChina’s market economic system and the integration of urban and rural areas, the phenomenonof homestead’s “pie-blind” disorderly outward expansion and extensive and inefficient use ofthe " hollow village "rural land resource appeared.In this paper, the theory of evolutionary economics and institutional economics are takenas analysis tools, from a new perspective of research analysis-institutional evolution,thispaper organically combines the system evolution and china’s rural home base systemtogether,using the concrete theory and method-theory of institutional change,evolutionarygame theory and theory of self-organization to explore and analyze the trajectory，dynamicmechanism, path and trends of the evolution of the of China’s rural homestead system, toreveal the law of our homestead system evolution and to explore the basic orientation of thefuture change of rural homestead system. The main contents and conclusions are as follows:Firstly, the article summarizes the sixty years’ history of our country’s rural homesteadsystem adjustment since the new China was founded, analyzes the current problems existingin China’s homestead system, and investigates the farmers’ satisfaction with the homesteadsystem.Since the new China was founded, our country’s rural residential land reform can bedivided into three stages: the first stage (the early days-the late1950s) is the farmers’homestead housing privatization period, in the second phase (the late1950s-the beginning of the1980s) the farmers’ private land system is transformed to the cooperatives collectivesystem, the third phase (early1980s-present) is the homestead using right circulationexploration period. Land policy adjustments in each period all reflect the characteristics of thetransition from the imbalanced institutional system to the balanced.The homestead system’s inadaptability with the reality are mainly shown as follows:Firstly, the non-market of rural homestead leads to idle waste and inefficient use of thehomestead; Secondly, the rural homestead has welfare properties, which makes it hard for itsproperty effects to be reflected, resulting in damage to the property rights and interests offarmers; Thirdly, the "blur" of the rural homestead property rights results in the loss ofcollective property and damage to the interests of the masses; fourthly, the dispersed layout ofthe rural homestead constraints the construction of public facilities, hinder the improvementof the farmers’ quality of life; fifthly, homestead lacks legal transfer mechanism, resulting in alarge number of recessive circulation and gray transactions occurred.Through field investigation, we learned that the farmers are basically satisfied with thehomestead system, but most of them want to establish the rural homestead freedomcirculation system.Secondly, the article analyzes the power of China’s rural homestead system evolution;build analytical framework and logical thinking for China’s rural homestead system evolution.The basic driving force of Chinese rural homestead system evolution comes from theemergence of external profit which can not be obtained in the current institutionalarrangements system, the subjects of the system-local government, rural collective economicorganizations, the relationship between the farmers and interactive game affect our country’shomestead institutional evolution path and trajectory. We build two logical thinking toexplain the system evolution. One of the logic thinking is from the relative price improvementand external profit formation to explain homestead system evolution. In the advance ofindustrialization, marketization of the rural areas and urban-rural integration, rural landresources are increasingly scarce, homestead relative factor prices increases, prompting thecentral government, local government, rural collective economic organizations, landcompanies and farmers found a potential institutional change revenue, which is the “externalprofit” that can not be obtained under the existing institutional arrangements, resulting in thenon-equilibrium of the system,which makes collective economic organizations, the landcompanies, farmers form the primary action group to chase collective land value-addedbenefits, to seek the effects of large-scale land utilization, to optimize the efficiency of theland resources allocation, and to reduce the cost of land transactions to first response to “external profit”; then from the strategic global considerations, the central government andlocal governments feel the impact of the primary action group, think that the benefitsoutweigh the costs of institutional change, take the initiative to introduce the authority andcommand to build a formal system of awareness to promote institutional change and form thesub-action group; two groups work together to achieve institutional innovation, variousinterest groups obtain the potential benefits and system return to equilibrium again. Thesecond logical thinking is gaming among the interest group, to agree to consistency and toreach homestead system evolution. To economic parties, in order to get the “external profit”which can not be got under the existing institutional arrangements, it is necessary to changethe existing institutional arrangements, and make institutional change. Institutional changewould affect the economic interests of the relevant economic parties, due to the fact thatdifferent interest groups have different value function, they may make decisions and actionsthat conflict with each other. The degree of coupling and its correlation of forces between theinterest group determine the system evolution path and dimensions. After a series of cost-benefit trade-offs and game, the interest parties will reach some kind of compromise to form anew game equilibrium, and establish the new institutional arrangements.This paper uses two logical ideas above to explain why the project of urban and ruralconstruction sites linked to changes can proceed smoothly in Dongyandong Village,Liangzhuang Town, Daiyue District, Taian City, Shandong Province, but failed inXiliangzhuang Village.Thirdly, the article realizes the organic unite of rational design and spontaneousevolution in the homestead institution evolution.This paper argues that government rational design is the dominant force in the evolutionof China’s rural homestead system; the rural homestead system has the characteristics of self-organization, and the interaction between the subjects of the system (farmers, villagecollective and government) decided that the rural homestead system evolution is a complexself-organizing process. Openness is the precondition of our country’s rural homestead regimeevolution.Random fluctuation is the incentive for self-organization evolution of China’s ruralhomestead system.In China’s economic and social transformation process,the industrializationand urbanization, the rural marketization and the integration of urban and rural drive the ruralhomestead elements relative price increases to constitute a random fluctuation, it is this microfluctuations, by amplifying, form the giant fluctuation that promote the occurrence of the ruralhomestead system innovation and the evolution of its self-organization. Competition andcollaboration is the power of self-organization evolution of China’s rural homestead system. The competition and cooperation, the interaction and game among the governments, the ruralcollective economic organizations and farmers is the inherent power of the evolution ofChina’s rural homestead system. The specific institutional environment determines thatgovernment should play the most important role.Fourthly, the article makes some useful policy recommendations to improve our ruralhomestead institution.The land factor relative price changes will decide the direction of homestead institutionalchange in the long-term.However, the specific institutional environment determines thatgovernment has an important influence on rural homestead system innovation and evolution,the wishes of the central government and its policy preferences is particularly important, andnational design always decide the trajectory of institutional change as the main aspects. Butthe government’s institutional arrangements willingness has to consider the trend ofhomestead elements relative price changes, to coincide the path and direction of thehomestead system innovation and its elements’ relative price change to avoid conflicting andoffset of both sides, to make it move forward that along constantly enhance and optimize thetrajectory of evolution. The policy recommendations: Firstly, as for the direction of thereform of the rural homestead, to implement the homestead market-oriented reforms andestablish a unified competitive market of the urban and rural land; Secondly, to substitute thereform of property right to the reform of the existing governance structure, to keep all thecollective ownership structure, to confirm the ownership of the rural homestead to the villagecollective economic organizations as soon as possible, according to the actual needs, confirmthe homestead warrants to farmers gradually, to establish a standardized and orderlyresidential land system; thirdly, to determine the optimal property rights arrangements of thefuture rural homestead, it is the best choice to implement the rural collective construction landnationalization after the gradual improvement of the future market economic system. |
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