On Protecting The Interests Of The Land-lost Peasants In The Process Of Urbanization

The 2001 Nobel Economic Prize winner Columbia University professor Joseph E. Stilts pointed out:"There are two things which make biggest influence on the world in the 21st century: one is US hi-tech industry, the other is China'urbanization."The author deems there are two distinguishing features in the process of urbanization: one is the separation between peasants and land, the other is the transition from peasants to citizens. At present, the direction of Chinese development is not the development of cities, but the development of towns. These two concepts are identical in their connotations, but different in their extensions. The later is more concerned about the development of small-medium cities and small-town, which kind of urbanization is correspond with the practical situation of China.It is the iron law that the process of urbanization is inevitably accompanied with expropriation and demolition. With the development of Chinese urbanization, a large number of collective-owned land and rural residential land were expropriated, as well as a lot of peasants'self-used housing and affixed to their residential land were demolition. In this process, peasants, on the one hand, lost their home and land; on the other hand, their interests were harmed to extreme degree, for the expropriation has not been placed on a legal track. Therefore, some problems such as loss of the status of land ownership, low compensation standard of expropriation, imbalance of the distribution of compensation, huge drain on rural collective-owned wealth, the decline of living standard have become universal problems in the process of expropriation. Many peasants became"Three no-peasants", which means no job, no housing, and no guarantee. They merely depend on very little compensation acquired from expropriation. Thus, they gradually descend to vulnerable groups.In order to protect the interests of the lost-land peasants, we must thoroughly reform all kinds of existing institutional limitation which causes the loss of peasants'rights and interests. The following aspects should be paid great attention: firstly, rural property rights system should be perfected, and peasants as the main body of property rights should be defined; secondly, to accelerate the legislation of rural expropriation, as well as perfect the land acquisition procedures and the relieving way of rural collective-owned land; thirdly, to reform the rural land acquisition institution and improve the compensation standard of expropriation; fourthly, to reform the exiting benefit-distribution mechanism of expropriation, as well as increase the share of peasants'income in the distribution system; fifthly, to build and perfect the social security system for the land-lost peasants to resolve their troubles; sixthly, to correctly understand the role of government in the land acquisition, government at all levels should take the initiative to restrict its power, besides, on the issue of expropriation, government should be willing to be a"waiter:", rather than"demolition-worker".This paper studies many troubles faced by peasants in the process of rural demolition and expropriation, and then put forward some suggestions for the purpose of providing some methods to protect peasant'interests under the background of accelerating the urbanization. These suggestions include several aspects as follow: to reform the legislative system of rural expropriation; to redefine the public interests; to affirm the right of contracting rural land, countryside homestead right of use, housing ownership; to insist on the litigation of the dispute of rural expropriation; to waken the awareness of protecting peasants'self-interest; to comprehensively considerate the settlement of peasants after the expropriation.