去
过中国沿海城市的人可能会注意到当地显而易见的繁华，但在农村，数以亿计的中国人却面临着迥然不同的现实。尽管中国在沿海地区脱离贫困方面取得了巨大成功，但中国农村的骚乱却愈演愈烈。美国农村发展研究所(Landesa)前不久的一项调查对个中原因提供了一些线索：在努力消除农村和城市不断加大的生活水平差距方面，中国政府开始力不从心。就在最近，广东省农民连续几天闹事，不仅封堵了高速公路，还在政府大楼外抗议，这可是难得一见的群情激昂的场面。他们为自己的土地被强制没收并出售感到气愤。中国社会科学院表示，去年中国估计出现了18.7万起"群体性事件"(即示威或抗议)，其中65%与土地纠纷有关，这表明中国在农村土地改革方面的进展并不平衡。
中国经济持续增长与社会和谐在很大程度上将有赖于农村改革能否深入下去。中国有整整一半的人口仍生活在农村，他们中的大多数以务农为生。中国是世界上城乡收入差距最大的国家之一。
共产党执政初期，土地重新分配给无地农民时，毛泽东对土地私有制曾一度欣然接受，农业生产力也因此得到了提高。不过，这种局面止于毛泽东在"大跃进"时期实行的土地集体所有制，此举是灾难性的，导致饥荒的爆发。打破土地集体所有制是中国1979年首当其冲的主要改革之一。由此出现的生产力大幅提升为更大比例的农村劳动力转向制造业创造了条件。
事实证明，上世纪80年代通过家庭联产承包责任制向土地私人所有回归的运动是迈向正确方向的重要一步。最初，这一制度只赋予农民短期的土地承包使用权，这种权利也没有在立法中得以体现。不过从上世纪90年代开始，中国出台了一系列越来越进步的法规，它们赋予了农民30年土地使用权、可转移这些权利的能力以及当这些权利受到侵犯时可得到的有限保护。
然而，这些改革没有被完全贯彻执行，而且不管怎么说，进行得都不能算深入。这就引起了麻烦，因为快速增长的土地需求促使地方政府为了商业目的而努力征收土地。
中国农民目前仍缺少土地权利，这其中有三个重要原因。首先，只有约一半的中国农民获得了正式确定其30年土地使用权利的基本法律文件。其次，在地方政府征收土地时，农民的土地权利得不到足够的保护。最后，妇女的土地权利基本上得不到正式确认或文件证明。
美国农村发展研究所去年对中国17个省1,500多个农村家庭进行了全国调查，结果表明，只有约一半的村子给了农民有关土地权的法律证明文件。地方当局受中央政府的委托下发这些文件，但其本身却常常缺乏这样做的政治意愿或资金。
缺少这种证明文件是经济发展的重大障碍。美国农村发展研究所的调查发现，拥有合法地契的农民进行提高生产力的长期性投资(如温室、果园、水利和梯田建设等)的几率可增加76%。此外，更完备的法律文件还会培育出一个有效的土地市场。据美国农村发展研究所的估计，通过全面执行现有法律与保护农民的土地权利，中国政府实际上可将农民的土地价值(仅农业用地)提高约7,500亿美元。
除此之外，这类文件对解决地方政府官员征用农民土地这个主要问题也将起到至关重要的作用。若没有合法文件，农民的土地更容易在极少甚至根本没有补偿或协商的情况下被征用。农民可能成为地方干部精心策划的强制性交易的牺牲品，后者把土地提供给商业性开发商。
美国农村发展研究所在调查中的另一项重大发现是，只有16%的合法地契上写有妻子的姓名，绝大多数只有作为一家之主的男性的姓名。印度、尼泊尔、尼加拉瓜与洪都拉斯等多个国家的经验表明，法律文件上写有妻子姓名不仅可巩固其权利，还可提高妻子以及全家的幸福感。研究表明，若女性对其使用的生产性资产拥有控制权，她们会把更多收入投入到子女发展上。
在解决上述问题方面，中国不宜再做耽搁。其中最重要的是下发文件。中央政府应考虑提供充足的专项资金来支持文件下发工作，把地方官员的升迁或处罚与其在文件下发工作方面的表现挂钩，同时进行独立的实地评估，以对实际进展情况做到心中有数。
中国政府必须改革有关农村征地的法律，限制征地范围，加大赔偿力度，提高征地透明度。今年批准通过的一个规定是朝着正确方向迈出的一步，但是仍赋予了国家太多权力，给普通农民的权力则少得可怜。征收土地时，农民应该得到更好的通知和程序保护，并获得远高于现在的赔偿。
法律应至少规定，农民目前30年土地权利可自动续订，或大大延长30年的期限，此举或许可以大大提高农村的稳定程度。
若不进行上述举措，中国政府肯定会看到，农村数百万人口的怒气将更加高涨，抗议也将越来越多。具有讽刺意味的是，让中国贫苦农村群众作为生产者和消费者融入全球经济的办法竟然在于关注毛泽东最初提出的呼吁农民权利的口号。
HANSTAD是美国农村发展研究所所长和CEO，该所是一个全球性组织，与多个政府合作，帮助穷人获得土地权利。
（更新完成）
（本文版权归道琼斯公司所有，未经许可不得翻译或转载。）
TIM HANSTAD
Visitors to China's coastal cities may see conspicuous prosperity, but a very different reality applies to hundreds of millions of Chinese in the countryside. For all China's success in lifting coastal areas out of poverty, unrest in the countryside is growing. A recent survey by Landesa offers some clues as to why: The government is falling behind in efforts to close the growing gap between rural and urban living standards.
Most recently, farmers in Guangdong province rioted for several days, blocking a highway and protesting outside government offices in an unusually vigorous display. They were angry about the forcible seizure and sale of their land. The Chinese Academy of Social Sciences reports that 65% of the estimated 187,000 'mass incidents' (demonstrations or protests) last year were related to land disputes, suggesting uneven progress on China's pursuit of rural land reform.
Continued growth and social harmony will depend in significant part on further rural reforms. Fully half of China's population still lives in the countryside, most of those engaged in farming. China's rural-urban income gap is one of the world's largest.
In the Communist Party's early years in power, Mao Zedong embraced private land ownership when redistributing land to landless peasants. That yielded productivity gains until Mao disastrously collectivized farms in the Great Leap Forward, leading to famine. Breaking up collective farms was one of the first major reforms attempted in 1979. The production surge this spurred created the backdrop for the shift of a larger proportion of the rural labor force into manufacturing.
The movement back toward private property through lease rights in the 1980s proved to be an important step in the right direction. Initially, those rights were short term and not reflected in legislation. Starting in the 1990s, however, a series of increasingly progressive laws provided farmers with 30-year property rights, the ability to transfer those rights, and limited protection when those rights were violated.
Yet these reforms have not been fully implemented and in any event didn't go far enough. That has led to trouble, as rapidly rising demand for land encourages local governments to try to seize land for commercial purposes.
Property rights for China's farmers are still lacking for three key reasons. Only about half of China's farmers have received the key legal documents formalizing their 30-year rights. Farmers' land rights are not adequately protected against local government takings. And women's land rights are rarely formalized or documented at all.
Landesa's nationwide survey of more than 1,500 households across 17 provinces, conducted last year, shows that only about half of all villages have given farmers legal documentation of their land rights. Local authorities are charged by the central government with issuing such documents, but often lack the political will or funding to do so.
Lack of this kind of documentation is a significant economic hurdle. Landesa's survey found that farmers with legal land contracts are 76% more likely to make long-term, productivity-enhancing investments such as greenhouses, orchards, irrigation and terracing. Better documentation would also foster an efficient land market. By fully implementing current laws and protecting farmers' land rights, China's government could effectively increase farmers' land values (for agricultural use only) by roughly $750 billion, according to Landesa's estimates.
Such documentation also will be crucial to addressing the second major problem: land seizures by local government officials. Without the right paperwork, farmers are more vulnerable to having their land taken with little to no compensation or consultation. They can fall prey to coercive deals choreographed by local cadres who funnel land to commercial developers.
Another significant finding from Landesa's survey is that only 16% of legal land contracts contain the wife's name; the vast majority contain only the name of the male head of household. Experience from numerous countries such as India, Nepal, Nicaragua and Honduras suggests that including the names of women on the legal documents not only solidifies their rights, but lead to welfare improvements for women and for their families. When women control productive assets they use, research shows they will invest more of their income into children's development.
Beijing can ill afford further delays in tackling these problems. The most important issue is document issuance. The central government should consider providing adequate and earmarked funding to support the issuance programs; tying the promotion or disciplining of local officials with their performance in this aspect; and conducting independent field assessment to have a reliable understanding of actual progress.
The government must also reform the legislation on rural land takings, limiting the scope for expropriations, improving compensation, and increasing transparency. A regulation passed this year is a step in the right direction, but it still gives the state too much power and ordinary farmers too little. Farmers deserve better notification and procedural protections as well as much higher compensation when land is taken.
The law also could dramatically enhance stability by at least specifying that farmers' current 30-year land rights are automatically renewable, or lengthening the 30 years to a considerably longer term.
Without these measures, the Communist Party ensures that it will see more anger and protests from the millions in the countryside. Ironically, the path to integrating China's poor rural masses into the global economy as producers and consumers lies in heeding Mao's original battle cry for farmers' rights.
Mr. Hanstad is president and CEO of Landesa, a global organization that partners with governments to help secure land rights for the poor.
Visitors to China's coastal cities may see conspicuous prosperity, but a very different reality applies to hundreds of millions of Chinese in the countryside. For all China's success in lifting coastal areas out of poverty, unrest in the countryside is growing. A recent survey by Landesa offers some clues as to why: The government is falling behind in efforts to close the growing gap between rural and urban living standards.
Most recently, farmers in Guangdong province rioted for several days, blocking a highway and protesting outside government offices in an unusually vigorous display. They were angry about the forcible seizure and sale of their land. The Chinese Academy of Social Sciences reports that 65% of the estimated 187,000 'mass incidents' (demonstrations or protests) last year were related to land disputes, suggesting uneven progress on China's pursuit of rural land reform.
Continued growth and social harmony will depend in significant part on further rural reforms. Fully half of China's population still lives in the countryside, most of those engaged in farming. China's rural-urban income gap is one of the world's largest.
In the Communist Party's early years in power, Mao Zedong embraced private land ownership when redistributing land to landless peasants. That yielded productivity gains until Mao disastrously collectivized farms in the Great Leap Forward, leading to famine. Breaking up collective farms was one of the first major reforms attempted in 1979. The production surge this spurred created the backdrop for the shift of a larger proportion of the rural labor force into manufacturing.
The movement back toward private property through lease rights in the 1980s proved to be an important step in the right direction. Initially, those rights were short term and not reflected in legislation. Starting in the 1990s, however, a series of increasingly progressive laws provided farmers with 30-year property rights, the ability to transfer those rights, and limited protection when those rights were violated.
Yet these reforms have not been fully implemented and in any event didn't go far enough. That has led to trouble, as rapidly rising demand for land encourages local governments to try to seize land for commercial purposes.
Property rights for China's farmers are still lacking for three key reasons. Only about half of China's farmers have received the key legal documents formalizing their 30-year rights. Farmers' land rights are not adequately protected against local government takings. And women's land rights are rarely formalized or documented at all.
Landesa's nationwide survey of more than 1,500 households across 17 provinces, conducted last year, shows that only about half of all villages have given farmers legal documentation of their land rights. Local authorities are charged by the central government with issuing such documents, but often lack the political will or funding to do so.
Lack of this kind of documentation is a significant economic hurdle. Landesa's survey found that farmers with legal land contracts are 76% more likely to make long-term, productivity-enhancing investments such as greenhouses, orchards, irrigation and terracing. Better documentation would also foster an efficient land market. By fully implementing current laws and protecting farmers' land rights, China's government could effectively increase farmers' land values (for agricultural use only) by roughly $750 billion, according to Landesa's estimates.
Such documentation also will be crucial to addressing the second major problem: land seizures by local government officials. Without the right paperwork, farmers are more vulnerable to having their land taken with little to no compensation or consultation. They can fall prey to coercive deals choreographed by local cadres who funnel land to commercial developers.
Another significant finding from Landesa's survey is that only 16% of legal land contracts contain the wife's name; the vast majority contain only the name of the male head of household. Experience from numerous countries such as India, Nepal, Nicaragua and Honduras suggests that including the names of women on the legal documents not only solidifies their rights, but lead to welfare improvements for women and for their families. When women control productive assets they use, research shows they will invest more of their income into children's development.
Beijing can ill afford further delays in tackling these problems. The most important issue is document issuance. The central government should consider providing adequate and earmarked funding to support the issuance programs; tying the promotion or disciplining of local officials with their performance in this aspect; and conducting independent field assessment to have a reliable understanding of actual progress.
The government must also reform the legislation on rural land takings, limiting the scope for expropriations, improving compensation, and increasing transparency. A regulation passed this year is a step in the right direction, but it still gives the state too much power and ordinary farmers too little. Farmers deserve better notification and procedural protections as well as much higher compensation when land is taken.
The law also could dramatically enhance stability by at least specifying that farmers' current 30-year land rights are automatically renewable, or lengthening the 30 years to a considerably longer term.
Without these measures, the Communist Party ensures that it will see more anger and protests from the millions in the countryside. Ironically, the path to integrating China's poor rural masses into the global economy as producers and consumers lies in heeding Mao's original battle cry for farmers' rights.
Mr. Hanstad is president and CEO of Landesa, a global organization that partners with governments to help secure land rights for the poor.
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