Land circulation can stimulate China's rural reform

Training "specialized" farmers and narrowing the urban-rural gap

According to the new policy, circulated land must be used for farming, and not for other purposes; and no one can force farmers to transfer their contracted land. From a long-term perspective, land circulation can help them increase their incomes, cultural levels and social status, thus narrowing the gap between urban and rural living standards and promoting social equality.

The Third Plenary Session of the 18th CPC National Congress stressed the creation of new agricultural operators -- large family farms, enterprises and cooperatives. The practitioners engaged in China's agricultural future are profit gainers and also risk takers. Their mode of operation is big investment and production.

Not long ago, I paid a visit to Yewu Village, Yingde Town, in Guangdong Province. The local people told me that since village farmland had been centralized for development, their per capita annual income had increased from 2,000 yuan (US$325.7) to 15,000 yuan (US$2,443.5).

I was told that the number of villagers who went out to work in big cities had been reduced from more than 60 in the past to only a dozen now. More and more villagers like to stay home to farm."

Learning from foreign experience to modernize agriculture

There are two aspects to the new system of agricultural operation -- fostering new agricultural operators and providing socialized agricultural service. Japan has set a good example for China in this regard.

Japan implemented its basic agricultural law in 1961 to launch land reform, aiming to improve farmers' social status and training self-management households. The first goal was achieved in 1972, while the second operation is still underway.

At present, 78 percent of Japan's farmers are engaged in non-agricultural production as their main income source. The situation is very similar to that of China. Japan's method of agricultural production has been promoted in Taiwan and South Korea and has proved successful.

Agricultural cooperative organizations, distributed across Japan, represent the interests of farmers. They provide Japanese farmers with multi-dimensional service from production materials, to technical guidance to sales. They not only help farmers solve problems in agricultural production, but also ensure the quality of agricultural products.

Yet, the agricultural development in Japan also has its disadvantages. The biggest is that private land ownership makes centralization difficult.

I think there is great promise for agricultural cooperation between China and Japan. Learning from each other to make up for each other's deficiencies would certainly benefit both peoples.

The author is a professor with the Department of Economics of the Party School of the Central Committee of the CPC. He has paid many visits to Tokyo University of Japan to study agriculture and rural economic development.

This article was written in Chinese and translated by Li Jingrong.