Imbalance Land Development And Trans-Regional Fiscal Payment Institutional Reform

Since the year of reform and opening up,the economic development of China has made a great progress.The GDP has ranked the second in the world just after the United States since 2010.However,with the rapid development of economy,the pace of city expansion is accelerating,leading to a large loss of arable land resources in China.In order to maintain the cultivated land at 1.8 billion mu,the central government carried out the spatial management of land with a series of strict farmland protection policies since the 1990’s.According to the comparative advantage of land resources and social economic development,spatial management limits the quotient of construction land.and allocates the task of farmland protection to regional governments in the form of administrative order.Although the cultivated land has been maintained at 1.8 billion mu,which contributes to national food security and ecological environment construction,the regional imbalance land development should not be underestimated.The people in restricted zones took over too much responsibilities to protect resources and environment at the expense of their own development opportunities,which leads huge losses in their interest.The central government is the main supplier of the cultivated land protection policies,and the local government is the implementer.When local government fall into fiscal dilemma,the enthusiasm of protecting cultivated land will be weakened,and then the policy implementing effect of cultivated land protection will be reduced.So the core problem of ensuring national food and ecological security is how to motivate local government to protect cultivated land.The fiscal transfer payment system is an economic incentive system to reconcile the contradiction between cultivated land protection and economic development effectively,which achieves the goal of protecting cultivated land by balancing the fiscal revenue between non-agricultural development zone and cultivated land protection zone.As one of the most important capital source of land consolidation,the new construction land compensation fee is substantially a kind of trans-regional fiscal payment.The payment and distribution of the fee achieve the goal of redistributing local fiscal revenue,which may balance the disposable fiscal capacity between non-agricultural development zone and cultivated land protection zone,thus reaching the target of cultivated land protection.Based on the new construction land compensation fee,the fiscal transfer payment system has been put into force for almost 15 years.How effective it is and how to improve it have become as focus of academic researchers.From the perspective of local government’s economic interests,this paper built a theoretical analysis framework "Spatial management is the basis-Imbalance land development is the essence-Imbalance between fiscal rights and responsibilities is the transmission mechanism-Local fiscal dilemma is the form of expression-Fiscal transfer payment is the mean of resolution-Reducing the imbalance degree and protecting the cultivated land is the ultimate objective".We gave definition to the imbalance land development and its formation mechanism;then constructed a comprehensive measurement model for imbalance land development;at last,carried out empirical analysis on the level of province and county respectively to discuss the spatial and temporal changes of imbalance degree.On this basis,this paper selected the typical regions of different types as examples,discussed the sensitivity of imbalance degree to fiscal transfer payment,so as to determine the capital allocation priority of provincial/county-level fiscal transfer payment,thus to lead a focused funds distribution and to improve the efficiency of funds use.In addition,after constructing local fiscal dilemma model,we explored interaction mechanism of imbalance land development to local fiscal dilemma on the basis of the relationship between imbalance land development and imbalance rights of finance and responsibilities,and then made an empirical test from the level of province and county respectively.Lastly,based on the effect evaluation for cultivated land protection of existing fiscal transfer payment system which takes new construction land compensation fee as carrier,this dissertation explored fiscal transfer payment system reform from two aspects,one is between the central government and the local government,the other is between the provincial government and the county government.The specific research contents and conclusions are as follows:Firstly,this dissertation discussed the connotation,the comprehensive measurement and the sensitivity analysis of imbalance land development.This part is the third chapter in the dissertation and is one of the two major problems to be solved in the research.In the first part,we gave an overview of the connotation of imbalance land development under spacial management,and on this basis,defined the research object of this study,which is the unbalanced development opportunities of farmland.In the second part,from the perspective of unbalanced land structure and unbalanced right of revenue and expenditure of land respectively,we constructed measurement model of unbalanced development and gave the weight to them based on the contribution of unbalanced degree to economic development from two research perspectives,then calculated the comprehensive unbalanced degree of land(which was also the unbalanced degree of land development defined in the dissertation)by weighted summation;besides,we explored the spatial and temporal changes of unbalanced degree from provincial and county level respectively.In the research of county level,we took Hubei province as an example.In the third part,we analyzed sensitivity of unbalanced degree to fiscal transfer payment in provincial/county regions of different types to provide a theoretical basis for determining the priority of fiscal investment funds.The results show that,China’s land development imbalance degree was high overall,which was 1.156,but decreased year by year;the provincial/county difference in unbalanced degree was significant,areas in lower degree were mostly located in the regions where the economic developed well,and areas in higher degree were mostly the remote areas with a backward economic development or the grain and rapeseed producing provinces/counties where the development rely on agricultural production;the unbalanced degree decreased with the increase of fiscal transfer payment amount,and increased with the decrease of fiscal transfer payment amount,which shows a negative correlation;on the provincial level,the sensitivities of unbalanced degree to fiscal transfer payment were different significantly in the four types of areas:the middle area of Hubei province got the strongest sensitivity,the western area of Qinghai province was the second,the sensitivity of northeast area of Heilongjiang province was slightly lower than that of Qinghai province,the eastern district of Shanghai city got the worst;on the county level,the sensitivities of unbalanced degree to fiscal transfer payment were also different significantly in the four types of area:the plain area of Jianli county got the strongest sensitivity,the western mountain area of Xuanen county was the second,the Laohekou city in north Hubei ranked third,the plain area along the Yangtze River of eastern Hubei Hannan district got the worst.Secondly,the relationship between imbalance land development and local fiscal dilemma was discussed.This part plays the role of connecting the two major contents of the paper,corresponding to the fourth chapter in the dissertation.In the first part,we constructed the model of local fiscal dilemma based on the basic definition of local finance;then discussed the spatial and temporal changes of local fiscal dilemma by empirical analysis on provincial and county level respectively.In the second part,we explored the interaction mechanism of imbalance land development with local fiscal dilemma on the basis of relationship between imbalance land development and unbalanced rights of finance and responsibilities,and then made an empirical test from the provincial and county level respectively based on the former quantitative calculation of unbalanced degree and fiscal dilemma.The results show that,from the time dimension,local fiscal dilemma in China was serious,but improved yearly,the proportion of local finance and responsibilities was about 0.559 during the period of 2009 to 2013,and increased year by year;from the space dimension,the provincial/county difference in local fiscal dilemma was significant,areas with serious fiscal dilemma were mostly located in the regions where the economic development are relatively backward,areas with relatively moderate fiscal dilemma were mostly economically advanced regions,which means that there is a close relationship between local fiscal situation and the level of economic development;the model estimation results showed that the unbalanced land development will aggravate the degree of local government fiscal dilemma in both provincial and county levels.Finally,based on the effect evaluation for cultivated land protection of existing fiscal transfer payment system which takes new construction land compensation fee as carrier,we explored fiscal transfer payment system reform from two aspects,one is between the central government and the local government,the other is between the provincial government and the county government.This part is another major problem to be solved,corresponding to the fifth and sixth chapters in this dissertation.In the first part,we explored the ultimate reasons why the effect of central and provincial agricultural fiscal funds was limited by evaluating the existing fiscal transfer payment system which took new construction land compensation fee as a carrier,from the provincial and county levels.In the second part,by following the principle of matching local finance with expenditure,from the perspective of food and ecological security,we got the amount of distribution fee of each region based on the responsibilities born by the local government but spillover from its administrative division,so as to construct an optimization mechanism for the capital allocation for fiscal transfer payment system from two levels respectively,one is between the central government and the local government,the other is between the provincial government and the county government.The results show that,provincial/county cross-regional fiscal transfer payment which took new construction land compensation fee as carrier was helpful to reduce the loss rate of cultivated land resources,and achieved the goal of protecting cultivated land,however,its effect was very limited;on provincial level,compared to the fee concentration,the cultivated land protection effect of fees distribution was better;on county level,compared to the fee distribution,the cultivated land protection effect of fees concentration was better,its negative effect on the loss rate of arable land resources was greater;combined with the main functional area planning in Hubei province,the negative effect of fee concentration on the loss rate of cultivated land resources is more significant in the restricted development area,and the negative effect of fee distribution on the loss rate of cultivated land resources is greater in priority development zone.The responsibilities born by local government had spillover effects in most provinces of China,and these provinces should get the fees.Guizhou province with minimum contribution,accounting for only about 0.022 percent,got fee of 5.95 million yuan,on the contrary,Heilongjiang province with the highest contribution,accounting for about 21.46 percent,should get about fee of 5767 million yuan.The responsibilities born by local government had spillover effects in most counties(cities,districts)of Hubei province,and these counties should get the fees.Fang county with minimum contribution,accounting for only about 0.018 percent,should got fee of 1.64 million yuan,on the contrary,Jianli county with the highest contribution,accounting for about 6.296 percent,should get about fee of 568 million yuan.