By Qin Hui (秦晖), a professor of history at Tsinghua University
Nation, page 16
Issue 570
May 21, 2012
Translated by Laura Lin
Original article: [Chinese]

In China, some local governments are organizing large-scale relocations of rural residents, selling off their land and moving them into apartments as part of what is being called an effort to "Build a New Countryside."

This kind of activity has already attracted much controversy.

What I want to ask is, should rural residents be forced to vacate their land and move into an apartment building?

I could understand the question if it were raised by an agricultural family.

But the issue becomes so obviously absurd when the people asking the question are officials. These officials also appear to be using their position to present their answer to this question as some kind of public policy.

If a question such as "whether rural residents should move into apartments" can be decided by the government, then should officals also decide what the farmers are to plant, how much and how they plant as well as who they eventually sell the harvest to?

Housing is one of the basic necessities - clothing, food, housing and mobility - if the government starts interfering in people's housing, where will it end?

In fact, the whole process of rural reform, involves moving away from the former model of having local officials deciding what rural residents "should or should not do," to one in which residents themselves decide what they should or shouldn't do.

Of course, saying that rural residents should be able to decide for themselves does not mean that the government has nothing to do. The government as a "public servant" has the responsibility to provide services for their "master".

Many of China’s rural areas still lack basic public services. The government has the responsibility to provide these services, which go a long way towards reducing the gap between urban and rural areas and should be made a priority.

This is what the government should focus on, rather than trying to decide who can do what and where.

The government is supposed to serve the farmers and not the other way round. This should be common sense.

However, despite the fact that Chinese officials are accustomed to saying that they "serve the people," in practice it’s actually the people who are at the officials’ service. Given this situation, it will be difficult to turn things around.

Fortunately, a greater understanding of the true role of government does seem to have gradually made some headway in recent years.

For example, it used to be very common for urban authorities to put migrants in jail for not having a stable residence or work in a city. However, since the Sun Zhigang incident in 2003, things have changed.

Some places now say "If you want to come, come - if you want to go, go" (想来就来，想走就走), meaning that if a homeless person requests assistance, the government will not refuse them, but if they want to leave the city, the government has no right to stop them leaving.

This transition from the government having powers to "forcibly resettle" (强制收容) someone, to the government now being responsible for providing for homeless people if they request assistance - this is the true meaning of what "public service" should be.

As the homeless now have freedom of movement, shouldn’t ordinary rural residents be allowed to decide if they want to move into an apartment or not?

Under normal circumstances, the government would not have the authority to say if farmers should or should not move into apartments, but if rural residents wanted to improve their living conditions, they would be able to call on the government to help them.

Of course there is no one uniform answer to the question, some rural residents want to move, others don't.

In recent decades, a lot of farmers have built houses either for their own use or to rent out. The government has, up to now, refused to acknowledge the property rights of these structures and continues to threaten to take the land back.

One of the reasons why local governments might want to push farmers off their land and into apartment blocks is because they can gain fiscal revenue from land sales and thus finance projects that either improve their image or give them a better mark on regular work performance evaluations conducted by higher-level officials.

I think that in most situations, the question of whether rural residents should move or not, should be a question for them, if they want to move, then the government can help to provide related services.

If rural residents are not interested in moving, it's only in very special situations that the government can force them to move. It is only in extraordinary circumstances, for instance due to significant public interest, that the civil rights of the people can be compromised.

Any change in land stewardship should be implemented under the rule of law so that the definition of public interest is clear, the land transaction is voluntary, the alternatives have been taken into account, the price evaluation is independent and the compensation isn't lower than the market price.

Of course, the commercial development of land raises the thorny issue of distributing the profits from "differential rents."

We don't think that all these profits should all flow to farmers, authorities could adjust the situation through the land tax, this would be better than directly exploiting rural residents.

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