month in review • FAT DRAGON
market for rural land transfers could bring long-awaited wealth and opportunity to farmers
Mean fields no more R
China’s emerging
ead almost any article or watch any television report about China and you could be forgiv-
en for thinking the country basically consists of teeming cities interspersed with factories. Te media’s urban bias fails to reflect the fact that, despite 30 years of industrial development, China remains predominantly rural. Even taking into account the 150
FATDRAGON
Insights into the changing face of China
million or so rural migrants who have sought work in towns and cities, more than half of the country’s citizens still live in the countryside. Te average Chinese person, therefore, spends his days knee-deep in a paddy field, not working in a factory or an office. Tere are roughly 200 million
farming families in China, and they are poor, with an average per capita salary of US$900 in 2010. Amid all the talk about the country becom- ing an economic superpower, this fact is worth bearing in mind. Boosting farmers’ living stan-
dards means moving more of them into the cities, where they can find more productive jobs. Tis, in turn, leaves more land for those who continue to work in the fields, thereby easing China’s massive ru- ral labor surplus. Nowhere is the land-labor
the urban economy may be about to change: Tree years after the central government decided to encourage ru- ral land transfers, a genuine market in farmland is beginning to emerge. Tis will be a slow process, but a vital one for creating a more modern and profit- able farming system. According to a recent survey by
Landesa, a US-based non-profit orga- nization, one in eight farmers has par-
imbalance more apparent than in the countryside of Chongqing, in southwest China, where the fields are divided into a patchwork of tiny plots. Here the average household farm is just half an acre – versus a national average of one acre – even once you include land informally transferred from migrants to permanent rural residents. Most farming families in Chongqing live a subsistence life. Many now live in new two-storied homes with shining tiled walls, but these were paid for by relatives working in factories or on building sites far away in the city. But the pattern of living off handouts from
CHINABYNUMBERS
Projected rev- enue growth from China’s outbound tourism by 2020
381% 10 China Economic Review • May 2011 7.3m
The number of visitors expected to Shanghai’s Disney resort in its first year
Many farming families in Chongqing live in new two- storied homes with shining tiled walls, but these were paid for by relatives working in factories far away in the city
ticipated in a market transfer of land since 2008. Many of these are simple farmer-to-farmer trans- actions, but they also include transfers to agribusi- nesses that are looking to consolidate land, invest in better irrigation and machinery, and reap econo- mies of scale. Tis process is clearly evident
in western Chongqing, where vil- lagers are leasing their land to outside companies and working instead as wage-laborers. Typically, families receive RMB600 per mu of land, which works out to almost US$750 per acre. Te inevitable danger is that
farmers will get kicked off their land by unscrupulous local author- ities and rapacious businessmen. But the consolidation being driven by the agribusinesses will hugely benefit China’s farming sector. If abuses can be curbed – admittedly a big if – the trend promises to help boost productivity and sup- port the urbanization drive that
China’s leaders want to power future growth. And for the millions of old farmers forced to
work the land after their children migrate to the cities in pursuit of higher wages, the option of leas- ing out their holdings for a subsistence rent may prove a godsend. Tirty years after China began to dismantle its
rural communes and give households responsibil- ity for their land, the transition to modern farming has finally begun.
The estimated number of Chinese citizens currently liv- ing in prison or labor camps
7m 160
The number of Chi- nese Christians held by police at a service in Beijing
The percentage of Chinese dairies shut down after a safety audit
50
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