The Collective Forest Tenure Reform And Village Governance

In 2003, China government first began to carry out the newly-planned Collective Forest Property Right System Reform in Fujian and Jiangxi province, which was called as the second reform after the Household Contract Responsibility System Reform. By 2006, the main reform in Fujian and Jiangxi had been almost finished. And in the same year, the reform was started in an all-round way. On 8 June,2008, the central government announced full implementation of the Collective Forest Property Right Reform. The first forestry working conference was held in Beijing on 22 June,2009. since 1949, where the reform had drawn great attention from the government. Essentially speaking, the Collective Forest Property Right Reform is a re-distribution and restructure of the economic interests, which must be related with benefits of villagers. Meanwhile this reform is the most thorough in the Chinese history, touching institutional problems in collective forestry system and inevitably having a great influence on political and economic development in rural area. Therefore, a study on the Collective Forest Property Right System Reform will have a deeply practical and theoretical significance on the rural-governance.This article selects Xingqiao Village in Fujian, a reform-test-point as the study-object, analyzing impact on its village-governance of the reform in a deep-going way, under the background of its performing the reform since 2004. This paper presented procedure of the reform in test-point, analyzed operation and management of collective forestry descriptively and focused on the discussion of influence to its governance from the reform in the perspectives of village-finance and villagers'income, organizing resources of community, its social relation and social stability. It agued that the village had built joint-stock cooperative forest farm to manage collective forestry after the reform, making property ownership clearly established, operation system creatively improved and stocks held by villagers move smoothly, changing uncertain management-subjects to stock-holder, and ensuring interests distribution under systematic protection.The joint-stock-cooperative-forest-farm way to manage collective forestry has realized the operation in proper-scale, prevented dividing forest groups into different households, which matches characteristics of forestry production, additionally optimized production-factors and it is also an effective way to gather people to develop forestry production. Clearly-established property ownership and protection of villagers'benefits have balanced interests-relation between villagers and villager, emphasizing villagers' subject-positions and increasing both village and villagers'income to different extents. The increasing village-finance and its sustainability have ensured the stability of village's income, and let the two committees have enough fluids to develop its public services, improve farmers' welfare and the committees'governing ability. By using form of joint-stock cooperative farms, the committees are able to make villagers'interests closely related to their daily work. At the same time, they can arouse the enthusiasm of villagers to involve in village-management by implementing the villagers congress system and village-affair-public system, promoting the organization level of villagers. The democratization of public affaires, institutionalization of management and the public of joint-stock cooperative farms have ensured their benefits, improved relationship between the masses and leaders, made social relation more harmonious. Besides, intensive management of the collective land has reduced rate of forest-right disputes generated by decentralized operation, meanwhile, the exquisite design of system has avoided the disagreements effectively, making the village much more harmonious and stable.