Legal Analysis On The Property Right Reform Of Urban Collective Enterprise

Urban collective enterprises in China were initially established through the socialist transformation of individual handicraft or organization handicraft cooperatives. However, cooperatives transformed to the local state-owned enterprises, or to cooperative associations from1958. The structure of cooperatives has been terribly destroyed. Since then urban collective enterprises have a variety of types instead of one single type. The article refers to the urban collective enterprise which is only limited to the general one.Because of its defective property rights, the urban collective enterprise has initiated the reform of property rights from1993, hammering at the joint-stock enterprise transformation. Frustratingly, a large number of traditional urban collective enterprises still exist at present. Property rights reformations to parts of urban collective enterprises are built on the subsistence of other urban collective enterprises, which are commonly behaved as operating platforms of collective assets. Having no idea about how to deal with the collective property is the main reason for this phenomenon occurring. From the point of law, this phenomenon stems from unclear property ownership in urban collective enterprises. Even though "Civil Law" and "Property Law" describe the collective ownership, the legal meaning of "collective ownership" is not specifically identified. The right of collective property thus becomes too complicated and confusing.Proceeding from the analysis to theories and practices of the collective economy in China, this article struggles to explore the formation process of collective ownership and to seek out the meaning of the term "collective" in special time by pointing out the exceptive relation between the collective ownership and cooperatives. However, through scrutinizing the collective ownership, this article holds the point that the collective ownership is nothing more than a general description of the property rights in urban collective enterprises. The collective ownership in urban collective enterprises is also a general description to the legal ownership of urban collective enterprises and rights of enterprise workers. Rights of enterprise workers enclose the right to the remaining collective property. Therefore, the collective ownership in urban collective enterprises of the property is not the same as the legal ownership of the urban collective enterprises. Collective property should serve the workers’ collective interests, while it should not be deemed as the belongings of collective assets operating platforms.