[2008.10.25] 中国土地改革：耕者何时有其田？

Land reform in China
中国土地改革

Still not to the tiller
耕者何时有其田？

Oct 23rd 2008
From The Economist print edition

A timid approach to an issue of burning concern to one-eighth of the world’s people
面对世界八分之一人口的千呼万唤，政府的政策仍然缩手缩脚

AGAINST the ear-piercing screech of the global economy hitting the brakes, what sounded like a piece of good news could still be heard this week. China’s Communist Party unveiled its plan to double, by 2020, the disposable income of the 750m people in the Chinese countryside. One way it hopes to achieve this is through land reform. The party’s propagandists hailed this as a “landmark” decision, even drawing parallels with an event for which 30th anniversary celebrations loom: the launch of China’s reforms, with Deng Xiaoping’s rise to political ascendancy in December 1978. Sadly, there is less to the new reform than meets the eye. As so often with long-awaited party pronouncements, much of the “breakthrough” is already common practice and the toughest issues are skirted. The actual reform is rather minor.

在全球金融风暴的消息已经吼到声嘶力竭，不堪入耳的地步时，本周总算是听到了一则好消息。中国共产党出台了一项决议，提出到2020年中国7亿5千万农民人均纯收入(可支配收入)要翻一番。中共希望实现这一目标的途径之一是通过土地改革。中共的宣传机构将此次决议推崇为一次”划时代的”的决议，甚至堪比即将迎来30周年庆典的改革开放。1978年12月，邓小平重新登上政治巅峰后，在中国发起了改革开放。可悲的是，新的改革政策以表面功夫居多，主要都是些党派宣言，许多所谓的”深化改革”条例不过是些早已付储实践的老生常谈，而对一些迫在眉睫的问题，却又避而不谈。实实在在的改革措施可谓少之又少。

At least, however, it is aimed at the right target: the obstacles preventing farmers from exchanging their land, and building bigger, more economic, landholdings by consolidating the “noodle strips” of family plots they have held since the break-up of the old rural communes. These obstacles have indeed suppressed productivity, incomes and social mobility in the countryside, and contributed to the widening gap between town and country. Removing them would be a huge boost to China’s economy. Introducing a proper market in agricultural land would also do much to reduce one of the main sources of social tension in China: land-grabs by local authorities for which peasants are often poorly compensated, if at all. Every year, there are tens of thousands of protests across China by the disgruntled dispossessed.

不过这项决议起码在目标上还是正确的，即扫除农民交易他们土地的障碍，并使他们得以将农村人民公社取消以来就固守的窄条式的土地合并一体，从而能够在更广阔，更有经济效益的土地上耕作。这些障碍明显地阻碍了农村生产力的发展，农民收入的提高和社会流动性，同时还导致了城乡差距进一步拉大。扫除这些障碍将大大有利于中国的经济。在农村土地上推行适当的市场制度也将成为大力缓解中国最为严峻的社会紧张局面的重要手段之一：在当地政府的掌管下，农民通常即使能得到补偿，也是很少的。每年中国各地有上万人因为不满土地所有权被剥夺而发起抗议。

China’s cities have set the example. There the housing market has been in effect privatised for a decade. Land is state-owned but easily traded on long leases. The resulting boom in home-ownership has been a huge factor in the emergence of a prosperous middle class-now grappling with the unfamiliar horrors of a falling market .

中国的城市就为此树立了榜样。房产市场实际上私有化已有十年。。土地虽为国有化，但却可以很方便地进行长期的租赁交易。由此导致的购房热是中产阶级兴起的重要原因之一，而今，这些人却正面临着对楼市萧条的未知恐慌。

The new plan promises something similar in the countryside. It allows farmers “to lease their contracted farmland or transfer their land-use rights”. Since decollectivisation and the introduction of Deng’s “household-contract responsibility system”, rural land has been held by individual families. But it has remained “collectively” owned. Farmers have been granted 30-year leases, or land-use rights, which the party is now promising to make easier to transfer. That, however, is already allowed by law and has been happening for years.

新决议向农村作出了类似的承诺,允许农民流转土地承包经营权。随着集体所有制的瓦解，以及邓小平引入家庭联产承包责任制的概念，农村土地归单个农户支配，但仍然归集体所有。农民在被授予了30年的土地使用权和租赁权后，中共现在承诺他们将能够更方便地转让这些权利。然而这些早已被法律所允许，已经实施了数年之久。

The “new” proposals are not explicit on this, but a senior official has since suggested that leases may be made longer than 30 years. Yet the shortness of most peasants’ contracts-if they are lucky enough to live in places where local officials have got around to handing them out-is only one part of the problem. The party does not propose lifting the legal ban on farmers’ mortgaging their land and houses. So it will remain difficult for them to raise money to up sticks. Nor does it tackle the biggest issue: “collective” ownership, which the party decrees must not change. This may be partly for fear of making a near-reality of private landownership, which would undermine one of the last vestiges of the party’s communist heritage.

新的提案在这个问题上并没有交代清楚，但一位高级官员之后提出，租赁期限可以延长到30年以上。即便农民们足够幸运,正好住在当地政府能够为其四处发放合同的地方,租期过短仍然不是问题的全部.中共没有解除对农民对他们的房屋和土地的抵押权的法律禁令。因此他们将难以取得更高水平的收入。此外，中共坚决不改变党的政策，那么最关键的”集体所有制”的问题便仍然得不到解决。这要部分归结于中共害怕在实际上造成土地私有制之嫌，因为这样会摧毁其共产主义的最后一道防线。

What collective means in theory is rather woolly; in practice, much less so. It often refers to a bunch of party-approved village apparatchiks arrogating ownership rights for themselves. It is their stitching up of deals, pocketing of kickbacks and fleecing of farmers that provokes so many protests. Besides safeguarding their interests, the latest plan also preserves strict limits on the transfer of arable land. To preserve “food security”, China has set a minimum area for the country’s farmland-120m hectares, just below the present level.

集体所有制从理论上尚且是杂乱无章的，在实际操作中就更难理清了。通常情况下，会被一帮中共任命的村官们妄然把自己当成是土地的所有者。就是这些人操纵交易，大把地吃回扣，对农民实施剪羊毛式的搜刮才招致了那么多的抗议。最新的决议除了保护了这些人的利益外，还在转让耕地上保留了严格的限制。为了保障”粮食安全”，中国政府将农村耕地的范围划到了最小—–为1亿2千万公顷，低于当下的标准。

Something old, something new
亦新亦旧

It is on the non-arable “construction” land that the latest policy offers something new. It extends an experiment tried in Guangdong province, allowing such land to be traded without first going through government acquisition. In practice, of course, farmers will still be hostage to the whims of the collective and its often ugly human faces. Only a far more fundamental political reform would solve that problem: defining collective more precisely and opening the top job in the village, the party secretaryship, to genuinely competitive elections, ideally including non-party candidates.

在用作建筑的非耕地方面，最新的政策倒是有些新的内容。该政策在广东试验田的基础上进行了延伸，允许对类似的土地进行买卖，而无需先获得政府的批准。当然在实际上，农民们仍受限于含糊不清的集体所有制及其丑恶的人性面。只有一个更根本的政治改革能够解决这种问题，即给与集体所有制更加精确的定义，并且对村庄的最高领导人—–村支书展开真正意义上的选举竞争，最理想的状态是还能包含党外人士参与竞选。

It is a shame that such a reform is not on the cards; and that, even without it, the party’s approach to land reform is so timid. But, recalling those epochal reforms of 30 years ago, it is worth remembering that they too tended to come in baby steps rather than great leaps, and often were formulated retrospectively. In tiptoeing gingerly around one of the last Maoist shibboleths-collective landownership-the party may yet be sowing the seeds of the rural transformation it promises.

可叹的是，这样的改革是不可能真正上演的。即便不进行这样的改革，中共的土地改革也未免太过缩手缩脚。不过回想30年前那场划时代的改革，就会发现值得注意的一点在于中共过于倾向于循序渐进而不是大刀阔斧，在制定政策方面时不时地要三思而后行。土地集体所有制毛派最后的几个堡垒之一，中共小心翼翼地触到了它，中共兴许能在其承诺的农村转型中有所建树。

译者：Wordy_Camel   http://www.ecocn.org/bbs/viewthread.php?tid=15046&extra=page%3D1