A critical point not mentioned in the article is the government-designated minimum amount of land that must be used for growing food crops–which is 18.5 billion mu–in order to achieve the grain self-sufficiency policy. To me, this is one of the most perplexing puzzles about China’s agricultural policy: why doesn’t it import more grains instead of hoarding land for farming given the enormous opportunity costs? I have a feeling that the lesson of the “Great Leap Famine” is deeply ingrained in the minds of the policymakers. The regime cannot face the vague thought of yet another famine should anything goes wrong on the front of international food trade.

Firstly, it is important to clarify that what is formally allowed by the government is for farmers to transfer, rather than to trade land use right. Therefore, the focus of the new measures is to protect farmer’s rights which have been often compromised in practice.

Secondly, it is also useful to emphasize that although the land reform policy does encourage, to some extent, market-based specialized agricultural organization through land consolidation, investment of big city investors in agriculture is not explicitly encouraged in the Communiqué. And this goes back to the first point. After all, as a very insightful comment points out, “it is not about ‘buying’ land use right”.

Lastly, there is undoubtedly still a long way to go before the market-based organizations of agricultural production can be fully established. To provide a market for productive factors (e.g. land, labour and capital) across city and the countryside requires a rural-urban integrated institutional setup. This once again calls for adjustment of the system rather than modifying one or two parameters.

In medium and longer term, to resolve the migration problems as what you pointed out, i.e. family migration requires a rural-urban integrated social welfare system, which needs the current rural-urban disparity to be addressed somewhat first. We are currently looking at how migrants’ wellbeing, their children’s health and eduation as well as the rural left-behind community are affected by this great migration movement.

Lastly, just a quick question, if you don’t mind, would you please share your source of information about the duration of migration as less than 5 years. With some recent preliminary study, my calculation is that most migrants actually spend longer than 5 year s in cities since their first migration.

your analysis on the issue is quite good, and I myself see this as a positive step for many.

Where I am having a problem though is in how this will work. right now, you have migrant labor that moves from the farm to the city, and this is surely going to continue as better jobs can be found in the city vs. the farm.

The problem though is that when this happens (current day), laborers move into danwei’s. Members of the opposite sex, spouses included, are often not allowed to live within the dorm, and neither are children.

So, with a system set up to support the able bodied to move to the city with grandparents and children behind, I just do not see how this hurdle can be overcome. How, migrant laborers will begin to rent a space large enough for the entire family, and move off the family plot, to a job in a factory that most do not consider their long term career (migrant labor typically stays less than 5 years).

Thoughts?

R
http://www.allroadsleadtochina.com
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