Liu Junjie: Explore the path to the realization of the "separation of three rights" of homesteads

Source: Economic Daily

The No. 1 document of the Central Committee in 2021 proposes to steadily promote the pilot reform of the rural homestead system, and explore the effective realization of the separation of ownership, qualification rights and use rights of homestead land. To promote the reform of the "separation of three rights" of residential land, it is necessary to carefully explore the path to its realization on the basis of clarifying the logical starting point of the "separation of three rights" reform.

China's current homestead system originated in the planned economy period, and its main characteristics are "collective ownership, member use, gratuitous distribution, and long-term occupation". The original design of the system for the free acquisition and long-term use of homestead collective members is to ensure the basic residence of farmers, carry the function of social security, express the national will to maintain social fairness, and play a basic role in ensuring that farmers have a place to live and promote social harmony and stability. Collective membership is the basis for the realization of the security function of the homestead, and it is this identity that gives the social welfare nature of the homestead and naturally excludes market transactions. From the perspective of farmers, homesteads not only play a role in residential security, but also are important property. With the rapid advancement of economic and social development and urbanization, the flow of urban and rural population and resource elements has accelerated, the property value of farmers' homesteads has gradually manifested, and the economic functions have gradually improved.

It can be said that the focus of the reform of the homestead system is how to coordinate the homestead guarantee function that reflects the will of the state and the property function of protecting the rights and interests of farmers, and solve the problems of idle waste of homestead land and the lack of property rights and interests of farmers under the premise of protecting the basic residential rights of farmers. This has formed the logical starting point of the reform of the "separation of three rights" of residential land, that is, through the improvement of collective ownership, it reflects the will to ensure social fairness, ensures the qualification rights of farmers to achieve household ownership, and appropriately activates the right to use to achieve the optimal allocation of resources and the property rights of farmers.

After identifying the logical origin of the reform of the "separation of three rights" of residential land at the theoretical level, it is necessary to innovate and explore at the practical level, improve the main body and exercise mechanism of the collective ownership of residential land, the qualification right of farmers and the right to use residential land in circulation, and explore an effective reform path.

Collective ownership needs to be implemented. According to the law, collective ownership includes the four powers of possession, use, income and disposal. However, due to the imperfect collective economic organization of peasants in many parts of our country and the imperfect governance mechanism, it is difficult to fully exercise the power of collective ownership. In reality, the exercise of the right of peasant collectives to possess and distribute is relatively sufficient, but there is no effective exercise mechanism for the right to dispose of and benefit, resulting in collective ownership being inflated to a certain extent. The core of the implementation of collective ownership of homestead land is to define the subject of rights of collective ownership at the legal level, give complete powers including benefits, disposal, etc., and improve the mechanism for exercising rights. The basic path is to formulate a law on rural collective economic organizations, improve legal personality, clarify the relationship between rights and obligations, improve the governance mechanism, and implement its income and disposal power for collective resource assets, including rural homesteads.

It is necessary to guarantee the right of peasant households to qualify. After the reform of the "separation of three rights" of homestead land, the farmers' homestead use rights under the existing pattern of "separation of two rights" of homestead land will be carried by the qualification right of farmers, so as to realize the residential security function of homestead land. At present, there are great differences in the understanding of the qualification rights and abilities of homestead farmers. From the perspective of the evolution of the homestead system, the peasants' homestead is based on the rights derived from the identity of collective members, and carries the function of ensuring the peasants' residence. In this sense, the right to peasant qualification is not a completely new right, but a technical treatment of the right to membership under collective ownership. In practice, due to the large differences in the actual situation in various localities, the determination of qualification rights should be carried out in conjunction with the reform of the rural collective property rights system, focusing on exploring the methods for determining qualification rights, the conditions for exercising and realizing them, as well as the realization path of special circumstances such as the abandonment, loss and re-acquisition of qualification rights.

It is necessary to appropriately release the right to use. The appropriate release of the right to use is the focus of the reform of the "separation of three rights" of residential land, and the right to use after decentralization carries the function of optimizing the allocation of resources and protecting the property rights of farmers, and its value needs to be realized through circulation transactions; and the expression of "moderate" also draws a bottom line for the scope of letting go of the right to use residential land. Therefore, the next step of reform path should be based on adhering to the bottom line and exerting efforts in two directions. The first is to improve the construction of the rural property rights circulation trading market, explore a variety of ways to revitalize the right to use residential land, increase exports for the circulation of residential land use rights, optimize the efficiency of resource allocation, and realize the property rights and interests of farmers in residential land. The second is to combine reform matters such as the paid use of homestead land and voluntary paid withdrawal, open up the conversion channel between homestead land and collective construction land, improve the policy system for revitalizing idle homesteads and farmhouses, and give the main body of utilization complete power.

(Economic Daily Liu Junjie The author is deputy director of the Reform Experimental Research Office of the Rural Economic Research Center of the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs)