土地流转外文文献翻译---土地流转对农民阶层分化的影响

本科毕业论文外文文献及译文文献、资料题目：The impact of land transfer on peasant stratification --An analysis based on a survey of Jingshan country, Hubei province文献、资料来源：网络文献、资料发表（出版）日期：2000.8院（部）：法学院专业：政治学与行政学班级：政治08姓名：学号：084772212指导教师：翻译日期：外文文献The impact of land transfer on peasant stratification--An analysis based on a survey of Jingshan country, Hubei province CHEN BaifengSchool of Law, Zhongnan University of Economics and Law; Research Center for Rural China Governance, Huazhong University of Science and TechnologyAbstract:Peasants’ motivation and purpose for transferring land vary from time to time. Based on a survey of 10 villages in Jingshan county, Hunan province, this article finds that the specificforms of rural land transfer include active long-term transfer, passive long-term transfer and short-term transfer. Land transfer has an important impact on the stratification of the peasantry. Present institutional arrangements for land ignore the legitimate interests of migrant families and poor and weak villagers and therefore they hold different attitudes toward land tenure institutions than middle peasants do. Based on the conclusions of an empirical analysis, this article puts forward a series of policy recommendations aimed at protecting the land rights of poor and weak peasant households.Keywords: land transfer, stratum, peasant stratification, land tenure arrangement Land transfer is the focus of current debates on the institutional change of land. Many scholarshave conducted research on the forms, causes and implications of land transfer and havecome upwith measures and countermeasures to standardize the transfer of land. Special attention has beenpaid to the role of land transfer in agrarian restructuring, industrialization, moderate-scaleoperation, rural labor transfer and peasant income enhancement. However, such studies rarely involve land’s impact on changes in the hierarchica l structure of current rural China. Chen Chengwen and Luo Zhongyong (2006) focus on dissecting the overall rural structure and examining the role of land transfer in reconstructing the rural social structure. Some scholars arguethat deregulating the transfer of land will lead to polarization among the peasantry (Wen Tiejun, 2008; Li Changping, 2008), but such an argument is merely a macrojudgment without factual support at the micro level. China is a huge country with uneven development in rural areas;peasant stratification is anything but a strange phenomenon. Therefore, we shall pay more attention to observing the stratification of the peasantry at the micro level.In classical Marxist theory, the institutional conditions of land are an important basis of class and stratification. In the 1930s, Chen Hansheng, et al, proceeded with an observation of the land tenure institutions and scientifically substantiated the feudal factor-driven class relations in rural China and the semi-colonial and semi-feudal nature of rural Chinese society. In times of revolution, Mao Zedong (1982, 1991) also singled out the institutional conditions of land as an important basis of class and stratification. He played a crucial role in understanding Chinese class conditions at that time and justifying the necessity of launching a land revolution. After land reform was launched in the People’s Republic of China, land no longer exerted a significant impact on rural class stratification and hence scholars discussed the rural class structure mainly based on occupational stratification (Lu Xueyi, 2002). After the agricultural tax was abolished, farming generated a handsome income for peasants and the impact of land transfer on rural social stratification and peasant stratification became increasingly pronounced. In September 2008, we 2conducted a survey of 10 villages in two township jurisdictions of Jingshan county, Hubei province. Based on the qualitative interview and quantitative statistics, this article attempts to discuss the impact of land transfer on the stratification of the peasantry.I. The complex reality of land transferAfter introducing the household contract responsibility system, the ruling Communist Party and government have enacted a series of policies aimed at permitting and encouraging the transfer of land use rights within the term of contract while stabilizing rural land contract relations. The central government has always intended to realize the transfer of land tenure rights according to law and on a voluntary and compensatory basis and to effectively protect the rights and interests of peasants. The reality is, however, very complicated. The motivation, purpose and method of rural land transfer vary from time to time. The actual conditions also vary across rural China. In Jingshan county,, land transfer has gone through three different stages:The first stage began in the 1980s. During this period, peasants transferred land before seeking jobs or doing business in cities. The transition to a market economy started early in Jingshan and as a result, land transfer took place earlier here than elsewhere in rural areas of central and westernChina.The second stage started in the late 1980s. At this stage, peasant burden became increasingly cumbersome. Many peasants were unable to bear the burden of the new levies and as a result, they had no alternative but to transfer or abandon their farmland and search for jobs in urban areas. The abandoned land was transferred under the stewardship of village collectives or committees. This was a prevalent phenomenon during the period from the 1990s until 2004, the year in which the agricultural tax was repealed.The third stage began in 2004. After abolishing the agricultural tax in 2004, the state no longer levied fees on peasants and instead offered them various subsidies. Farming gradually became lucrative and the once-abandoned land suddenly became sought-after. In addition, there were dramatic changes in the mode and state of land transfer. On one hand, peasants were less willing to transfer land, and the proportion of land transferred was in decline. On the other hand, some peasant households had to transfer their land because its size was too small to be profitable.In the face of different situations, peasants transferred their land in one of the three modes:1. Active long-term land transferActive long-term land transfer is when peasants choose to abandon contracted land in their home villages after settling down in urban areas, or actively seek to transfer the contracted land because they expect to settle down in urban areas. This form of land transfer existed from the 1980s onward and after the agricultural tax was repealed. Among the 60 villagers who transferred a large area of land in Caozhengong village, Jingshan county, 13 farmers transferred their land under this method. Six of the 13 farmers went to cities without their spouses or became non-farmers (private school teachers or temporary workers turned into full-time workers). The six villagers transferred their land in a foolproof way, and they now are living a decent life. The other seven villagers abandoned their land due to an optimistic judgment in their ability to work and live in urban areas. Six of those seven villagers are making a living in urban areas, and one of them returned to the countryside and bought a house and a plot of land in a village in an adjacent township. Among the six villagers settling down in urban areas, four villagers live an affluent life and two villagers are neither rich nor poor. Of the latter two villagers, one has bought a house with a tile roof in a town 3and makes a living by selling bean curd; the other makes a living by working in a barber shop.When a peasant household actively transfers its land for a long period of time, the transferee is naturally entitled to acquire the land for the mutually agreed-upon period of time.2. Passive long-term land transferPeasant burden became increasingly heavy from the late 1980s to 2003, when the reform of the tax and fee system was launched. Because grain prices were in decline and peasants lost money tilling the land, many of them transferred their land without little consideration. Sometimes the transferor even had to offer a subsidy of up to 300 yuan/mu to the transferee. Since taxes and fees were levied on land, abandoning land meant leaving taxes and fees up in the air, sograssroots-level governments forbade peasants from abandoning their land and forced them to pay taxes and fees even if their land was untilled. This is what Li Changping (2002) called “farmers have to till their land against (their) will when they actually wish to abandon it.” In this situation, some peasant households transferred their houses and land together to non-native immigrants from mountainous areas; some peasant households tried every means to move their registered permanent residence elsewhere and even ended up becoming unregistered residents. Still more peasant households preferred to just leave their land behind and go work and do business elsewhere. Consequently, a vast expanse of land was abandoned in rural areas. Some villagers asked their neighbors to care for the land, but the land changed hands soon after or was abandoned anyway. When villagers abandoned their land and went to work elsewhere, the township and village governments could not expect to collect taxes and fees, and as a result had to transfer the abandoned land by every means.The modes of land transfer conceived at township and village levels include “one land plot per household” contract, low-p rice contract and change of land use. “One land plot per household”contract means that in order to resolve land cultivation and irrigation issues, the village collective or committee reallocated land and concentrated the land contracted to each peasant household in one single plot of land to facilitate construction of small water conservancy facilities (He Xuefeng et al, 2003), thus making it more attractive for peasants to take over the contracted land. Low price contract occurred when the village collective or committee transferred the abandoned land at a price lower than the regular tax and fee burden. In this situation, village cadres often hold an attitude of “collecting a penny of tax and fee is better than collecting nothing.” Change of land use means changing the farmland use to attract villagers to contract it. For instance, hillside land canbe contracted to grow hybrid poplars; low-lying wetland can be used to dig a pond and raise fish. Under the orchestration of village collectives and with every endeavor of village cadres, the peasants who abandoned their land are able to transfer the land to those who are willing to acquire it.When the first-round land contract expired in 1997, the central government required each province to conduct a second round of land contracting. Peasants were not enthusiastic about thesecond-round contract because the farm tax and fee burden was too heavy and consequently, the cadres of many local areas, including those of Jingshan county, had no alternative but to make the second-round contract a mere formality. After the agricultural tax was repealed in 2004, farming became lucrative and many villagers returned home and asked for land, thereby unleashing a series of disagreements with the villagers who stayed in the farmland. The peasants who returned home were lawfully entitled to the farmland contracting rights, whereas the peasant households who stayed in the farmland had entered into contracts with village committees. The two parties4struggled in disagreement against each other, and the township and village cadres could not think of an effective way to overcome the impasse. In this situation, Hubei province issued Opinions on Improving the Second Round of Rural Land Contracting in November 2004 to “reconfirm landri ghts” in rural areas. This policy document made it possible to solve land disputes through compromise by adopting flexible measures under the condition of preserving the current status of land tenure without breaking the law.In practice, Jingshan county government handled land disputes by confirming land rights based on the existing land tenure institutions but requiring large farm households to give up a small piece of land (2 mu) to peasant households who had abandoned their land before the agricultural tax was abolished. Disputes were very acute at that time, and township cadres stayed in villages to handle the land issues. Even so, there were still 29 groups of Cao township villagers lodging petitions in 2005. Today some villagers who have received confirmation of land rights from the government are still unable to get their land. In consequence, the villagers who did not promptly return home and ask for land in 2005 are forced to relinquish all of their land for a long period of time; those who promptly returned home and asked for land are also forced to relinquish a large proportion of land for a long period of time (2 mu of land per person or 10 mu per household in Jingshancounty). Among the 60 households in Gongcun village that transferred their land, 47 households fall under this category. Now 24 of the 47 households have become “landless peasants” innon-suburban areas and three have become permanently “landless peasants” because they sold their house and land together to non-native immigrants, thus losing eligibility for confirmation of land rights. The other 23 households have received 2 mu of subsistence land. By contrast, the peasants who acquired land through land transfer are unexpectedly entitled to long-term land contracting rights due to policy and circumstance change.3. Short-term land transferThis is a prevalent land transfer method adopted by peasant households due to their expectation on long-term land possession and a sense of insecurity for other methods of making a living. In the rural areas of Jingshan, short-term land transfer is currently adopted by most peasant households that acquired 2 mu of subsistence land through the confirmation of land rights in 2005. In Production Team 1 of Gongcun village, there are 18 peasant households with contracted land at the present time: Only 10 households till the land at home, while the other eight households have only 2 mu of farmland each. These families transferred their land for a short period of time and moved elsewhere to find employment. In Production Team 3 of the village, there are 25 peasant households, of which 12 households moved their families elsewhere. Now five of the 12 households have transferred their subsistence land under the short-term scheme, but the other seven households are without any subsistence land. Most of the peasant households that moved elsewhere had left their home villages before the agricultural tax was repealed and transferred land in a passive way. Now a large proportion of them have stronger demand for land and choose not to transfer it for a long period of time because they are likely to return home to the land in the future. By contrast, the peasants who acquired land through short-term land transfer are thus entitled to short-term land contracting rights.II. Land tenure status and peasant stratificationThe foregoing analysis has revealed the existence of a number of different land transfer methods. This phenomenon is related to the policies concerning agriculture, rural areas and farmers in5different periods, and to the different conditions of peasants in different periods. In different periods and circumstances, peasants have adopted different land transfer methods. At present, landtransfer has a significant impact on the well-being of peasants. In Jingshan, the villages are under greater exposure or openness. Some leave home from time to time as a result of urbanization. Non-native villagers can settle down in the villages by acquiring land through land transfer. In this article, we will also analyze the stratification of the peasantry at the village level based on the detailed data about the economic and employment conditions of registered permanent residents in three villages. Roughly Jingshan peasants can be aggregated into five strata: migrant businessman stratum, peasant worker stratum, part-time peasant worker stratum, migrant family stratum and poor villager stratum, as shown in the table below:1. The migrant businessman stratumThis stratum refers to the upper stratum of peasants who have long been doing business elsewhere 6with almost no present dependence on rural land. They are completely dissociated with the villages in which they are registered as permanent residents. In the three villages, 10.4% of households fall under this stratum. On average, a migrant businessman earns an annual income of over RMB 30,000 and has a bank deposit of at least RMB 100,000. In Gongcun village, the two wealthiest businessmen should each have a bank deposit of RMB 1 million. Among the 15 migrantbusinessmen, 13 of them have houses in urban areas, six of them have bought or built houses in townships, and seven of them have bought houses in county towns or cities. In addition, some of them also keep houses in the village that are now solely the residence of elderly family members. Even though migrant businessmen are classified in the upper stratum of villagers, the vast majority of them have become “urbanized,” and the most successful businessmen can move to large cities. However, there are also a small number of businessmen who have met obstacles in the urbanization process and have returned to their home villages. Deng Deyi, a farmer in Gongcun village, went to Wuhan, capital of Hubei province, to sell rice in the 1990s but returned home in the face of tough busines s conditions. Returnees’ economic well-being is still in good condition because of money they earned and saved while working in urban areas. After the agricultural tax was abolished, the land interest structure has become more rigid, thus making it impossible for migrant businessmen to return to their home villages. Deng, 60, moved to a town to do business in the 1990s and cancelled his registered permanent residence in the village but failed to qualify forpermanent resident status in the town. At the time of “confirmation of land rights,” he failed to acquire any contracted land due to his lack of registered permanent residence. Now he earns a meager income and wishes to return to his home village but cannot because he has no land there. Generally speaking, most of the migrant businessmen in this stratum earn high income and do not care about land at all.2. The peasant worker stratumThe peasant worker derives the name from his/her dual identity of working partly as a peasant and partly as a worker. This stratum refers to the affluent stratum of villagers who till the land at home in farming seasons and work elsewhere in non-farming seasons. Peasant workers still have some dependence on rural land. In the three villages, 23.1% of peasant households fall under this stratum. On average, a peasant worker has 10-plus mu of land and earns an annual income of about RMB 30,000, including RMB 10,000 earned as a farmer and RMB 20,000 earned as a worker. The peasant worker status has been realized under the “incomplete family model”concocted by Lu Dewen (2008). Under the steady state of this model, young couples go together to work in urban areas, while the elderly stay home to care for children and continue to till the land. In Jingshan county, it is common for people over 70 years of age to till the land or help their children till the land. In a migrant working economy, working in cities is more important than tilling the land in the countryside. The gender-based division of labor characterized by “male breadwinner, female housewife” has now become the inter-generation division of labor and relay characterized by “young breadwinner, elderly housewifery.” In fact, this has evolved into a new pattern of supplementing migrant work with farming activity. “Peasant workers give precedence tothe worker side of the equation” because farming income is something that has long been taken for granted.3. The part-time peasant worker stratumThe part-time peasant worker stratum refers to the stratum of “middle peasants” who suppl ement farming income with income earned by working part-time in county seats and townships. Middle 7peasants are heavily dependent on rural land. Middle peasant is a benchmark on which villagers compete cosmetically with one another and try to “keep up with the Joneses,” and it also is a goalpursued by poor and weak peasant households. In the three villages, 46.4% of peasant households fall under this stratum. In Jingshan, a part-time peasant worker has 10-plus mu of land and earns an annual income of about RMB 20,000-30,000, including over RMB 10,000 earned as a farmer and RMB 10,000-20,000 earned as a worker. Those who fall under this stratum migrate frequently between urban and rural areas. Working in urban areas will not change their basic way of living but serves only as a means to making more money. Unlike peasant workers focusing on the migrant working economy, part-time peasant workers would rather concentrate on agricultural production and they are psychologically conservative. In their minds, they hope to expand land operation; in action, they shrink with cowardice. They intend to acquire short-term land tenure through short-term land transfer, but it is very difficult for them to acquire long-term land tenure through active long-term land transfer. During our survey interview, the part-time peasant workers were overtly envious of landlords who own 10-plus mu of land in adjacent villages and hoped to have more land themselves. Theoratically if they wished, they could become landlords by buying the houses and land of peasants who have moved to cities. In 2008, the total price of a two-story four-bedroom brick and concrete mixed structure house plus 9 mu of land was only RMB 21,000. Although the part-time peasant workers are financially able to buy the houses and land, few take concrete action to make their landlord dream come true. The houses and land of peasants who have moved to cities are often bought by non-native peasant households from mountainous areas. Part-time peasant workers are more inclined to acquire a small area of land (say, 1 or 2 mu) from a migrant family through short-term land transfer.4. The migrant family stratumThis migrant family stratum refers to the stratum of rural households that are mainly engaged in migrant employment and not dependent on rural land. They are like nomads, roaming outside of their home villages and returning once a year during Spring Festival. Some migrant families have even chosen to buy houses in urban areas; as a result, they are completely disengaged from the countryside and agriculture except for the fact they are still registered as permanent residents in their home villages. In the three villages, 10.8% of the peasant households fall under this stratum. In Jingshan, a migrant family usually has 2 mu of subsistence land acquired through confirmation of land rights in 2005, but some families are even deprived of subsistence land, making it neither realistic nor economy to till the land at home. More often than not, they choose to transfer the landand move their families elsewhere to find employment. On average, a migrant family earns an annual income of about RMB 20,000 by working in urban areas. Some peasant households may also choose to move their families elsewhere even though they have 10 mu of farmland. This happens when a better opportunity arises that allows them to earn an annual income of over RMB 20,000. Migrant families have special demand for land in the sense that they hope to reallocate and reacquire land through confirmation of land rights, then transfer it and continue to work in urban areas. Migrant families are usually peasant households that had abandoned the land before the agricultural tax was repealed. At that time, they passively transferred the land under thelong-term transfer sche me and became the “landless peasants” in non-suburban areas. They are full of anxiety over the future because no matter how much money they earn, they still lack a sense of security. They are deeply worried about the loss of the ability to work and make a living when they get old or ill. They are an underprivileged group in the villages. As they have been8working away from home year in and year out, it is very difficult for them to effectively express their interests in and opinions of land. When the “confirmation of land rights” was conducted in 2005, they rushed back to their home villages to claim land title but ended up being easily defeated one by one and eventually acquired only 2 mu of subsistence land.5. The poor villager stratumThe poor and weak peasant stratum is the bottom stratum in the village. This stratum is subdivided into two subclasses: 1) peasant households that become impoverished due to illness; 2) peasant households that have a small piece of land but cannot work away from home. These two subclasses are the poorest peasant households in the villages. Poor and weak peasants are mainly engaged in agricultural production and heavily dependent on farmland. They cannot work away from home due to a shortage of hands. Poor and weak peasants fall under the “poor peasant”stratum in the villages. The part-time peasant worker stratum serves as a yardstick of comparison and a goal of pursuit for poor and weak peasants. In the three villages, 8.8% of the peasant households fall under this stratum. A peasant who becomes impoverished due to illness can still earn an annual income of up to RMB 10,000 if he has 10-plus mu of land, and he will not be the poorest person in the village. If he does not have a large piece of farmland, however, he likely will become the poorest person in the village. Peasant households with 2 mu of subsistence land willbecome poor if they are unable to work away from home due to conditional constraints or to earn extra income by doing sideline business. Conditional constraints arise when there are children who need to be cared for or when the elderly are in poor health or deceased, thus making it impossible to maintain the peasant worker structure or part-time peasant worker structure under the “incomplete family” model. Gong Erping of Gongcun village fits neatly into this description. His wife died of cancer last year, and now he cultivates 5 mu of land while raising a child who is studying in a senior high school. During his interview, he said he is deeply worried about his poverty status but feels utterly hopeless as to how to escape poverty.Peasant strata may change as circumstances change. The economic pattern of the peasant worker stratum needs to be supported by the incomplete family model. In the absence of such support (say,the peasant’s parents lost land-tilling capacity), they would be no longer eligible for the part-time peasant worker stratum and may fall into the migrant family stratum. In the event of failing to maintain the peasant worker’s production method, t he vast majority of the peasants will choose to move their families elsewhere, transfer their land and give up agricultural income except in special cases where there are children who need cared for.In the rural areas of Jingshan, the land tenure conditions have more important impacts on the stratification of the peasantry. While some peasants can enter urban areas through their own efforts,other peasants may fall into the poor villager stratum due to illness or other reasons. Generally speaking, land tenure conditions are closely related to the stratification of the peasantry. Some peasant households may willingly relinquish their land titles after making a rational consideration. However, the current land tenure conditions are caused by policy factors such as the imposition of agricultural tax and fee burden, the abolition of the agricultural tax and the confirmation of land rights. The land tenure condition has to a large extent determined the stratum under which peasants fall. A peasant household that occupies more land can easily qualify for the peasant worker stratum or part-time peasant worker stratum and enter the middle stratum in the villages; a peasant household that occupies less land can only enter the migrant family stratum in thebest-case scenario and may even fall into the poor villager stratum in the worst-case scenario.9。