【08.10.27 英国《经济学家》】中国土改无法改变农民处境
原文http://www.economist.com/opinion/displaystory.cfm?story_id=12471124&fsrc=rss
翻译
http://blog.tianya.cn/blogger/post_show.asp?idWriter=0&Key=0&BlogID=534653&PostID=15615480
Land reform in China
Still not to the tiller
A timid approach to an issue of burning concern to one-eighth of the world’s people
AGAINST the ear-piercing screech of the global economy hitting the brakes, what sounded like a piece of good news could still be heard this week. China’s Communist Party unveiled its plan to double, by 2020, the disposable income of the 750m people in the Chinese countryside. One way it hopes to achieve this is through land reform. The party’s propagandists hailed this as a “landmark” decision, even drawing parallels with an event for which 30th anniversary celebrations loom: the launch of China’s reforms, with Deng Xiaoping’s rise to political ascendancy in December 1978. Sadly, there is less to the new reform than meets the eye. As so often with long-awaited party pronouncements, much of the “breakthrough” is already common practice and the toughest issues are skirted. The actual reform is rather minor.
At least, however, it is aimed at the right target: the obstacles preventing farmers from exchanging their land, and building bigger, more economic, landholdings by consolidating the “noodle strips” of family plots they have held since the break-up of the old rural communes. These obstacles have indeed suppressed productivity, incomes and social mobility in the countryside, and contributed to the widening gap between town and country. Removing them would be a huge boost to China’s economy. Introducing a proper market in agricultural land would also do much to reduce one of the main sources of social tension in China: land-grabs by local authorities for which peasants are often poorly compensated, if at all. Every year, there are tens of thousands of protests across China by the disgruntled dispossessed.
China’s cities have set the example. There the housing market has been in effect privatised for a decade. Land is state-owned but easily traded on long leases. The resulting boom in home-ownership has been a huge factor in the emergence of a prosperous middle class—now grappling with the unfamiliar horrors of a falling market (see article).
The new plan promises something similar in the countryside. It allows farmers “to lease their contracted farmland or transfer their land-use rights”. Since decollectivisation and the introduction of Deng’s “household-contract responsibility system”, rural land has been held by individual families. But it has remained “collectively” owned. Farmers have been granted 30-year leases, or land-use rights, which the party is now promising to make easier to transfer. That, however, is already allowed by law and has been happening for years.
The “new” proposals are not explicit on this, but a senior official has since suggested that leases may be made longer than 30 years. Yet the shortness of most peasants’ contracts—if they are lucky enough to live in places where local officials have got around to handing them out—is only one part of the problem. The party does not propose lifting the legal ban on farmers’ mortgaging their land and houses. So it will remain difficult for them to raise money to up sticks. Nor does it tackle the biggest issue: “collective” ownership, which the party decrees must not change. This may be partly for fear of making a near-reality of private landownership, which would undermine one of the last vestiges of the party’s communist heritage.
What collective means in theory is rather woolly; in practice, much less so. It often refers to a bunch of party-approved village apparatchiks arrogating ownership rights for themselves. It is their stitching up of deals, pocketing of kickbacks and fleecing of farmers that provokes so many protests. Besides safeguarding their interests, the latest plan also preserves strict limits on the transfer of arable land. To preserve “food security”, China has set a minimum area for the country’s farmland—120m hectares, just below the present level.
Something old, something new
It is on the non-arable “construction” land that the latest policy offers something new. It extends an experiment tried in Guangdong province, allowing such land to be traded without first going through government acquisition. In practice, of course, farmers will still be hostage to the whims of the collective and its often ugly human faces. Only a far more fundamental political reform would solve that problem: defining collective more precisely and opening the top job in the village, the party secretaryship, to genuinely competitive elections, ideally including non-party candidates.
It is a shame that such a reform is not on the cards; and that, even without it, the party’s approach to land reform is so timid. But, recalling those epochal reforms of 30 years ago, it is worth remembering that they too tended to come in baby steps rather than great leaps, and often were formulated retrospectively. In tiptoeing gingerly around one of the last Maoist shibboleths—collective landownership—the party may yet be sowing the seeds of the rural transformation it promises.
党谨慎地处理这一关系全世界1/8人口的事件。
紧急刹车的全球经济发出了刺耳的声音，与此相对，这周有一条新闻听起来像是好消息。中国共产党宣布，到2020年，中国7.5亿农村人口的税后收入将翻一倍。要达到此目的方式之一便是土地改革。党的宣传官员将此作为里程碑式的事件，并将此比作改革开放30年纪念庆祝的一次事件：1978年12月，随着邓小平掌控了政权，中国改革拉开序幕。遗憾的是，新的改革与人们的期待有所差异。在人们久久地等待党的公告之后，许多“突破”已经被化解为无关痛痒的措施，而最敏感的话题也被边缘化。切中时弊的改革其实很少。
但至少，这一改革的目标是对的：破除障碍，通过整合家庭承包的散田（旧式农村公社解体后便赋予了农民），使农民实现自由交易土地、建造规模更大、更经济的宅基地。这些障碍阻碍了生产效率、农民收入和乡村社会的迁移，加深了城乡差距的鸿沟。扫除这些障碍对中国经济将有极大的促进。在农业用地方面，引进合理的市场机制也会大大减少中国在主要资源问题上的紧张态势：总体来看，当地政府的圈地行为往往伴随对农民的极少补偿。每年，因为对失地不满，整个中国发生着数以万计的群体性事件。
中国的城市就是这方面的例证。房地产市场的私有化已经实行了10年。国有土地通过便利的交易可以长期租用。由拥有房屋而激发出来的结果，已经成为繁荣的中产阶级兴起的重要因素——他们现正在被衰退的市场所带来的未知的恐慌所折磨（可阅读相关文章）。
这一新计划对农村社会有类似的举措。它允许农民“可以租借政策规定的农地，或者流转土地使用权”。自从非集体所有制和和邓小平时代“家庭承包经营体制”引入以来，农村土地就被个体家庭所经营，但它们依然归“集体”所有。农民被赋予了30年租借期，或者叫做30年土地使用权。如今党已经承诺让使用权流转更容易，但是，这一举措早已被法律所允许，并且多年以来一直存在着。
这一“新”提议虽然在以上方面阐述并不明确，但一位高管已经表态：租借期可能会长于30年，尽管大多数农民契约的短缺只是问题的一部分——如果他们足够幸运，比如当地政府并未将土地剥夺并转交的话。党并不打算对“农民抵押土地与房屋”进行解禁，所以对农民而言挣钱依然是个难题。不仅如此，他们还要解决最大的问题：集体所有制，而党在此问题上不会让步。那么，组建一个旨在消解共产/党最后继承遗产的事物——真正的私人土地市场，就恐怕有些令人担忧了。
什么为集体所有，这在理论解释上就含糊不清，在实践中更是一塌糊涂。集体所有权经常被一伙党任命的村级官僚所“代表”，并据为己有。正是因为暗箱操作、赚取回扣和压榨农民才激发了这么多抗议事件。除了保证他们利益的安全，最新的计划也对耕地的流转维持着严格的限制。为保证“食品安全”，中国已经设定了农村耕地的最小面积——1.2亿公顷（相当于18亿亩——译者注），这刚好低于目前的耕地面积水平。
一些仍传统 一些有突破
在非农“建设”用地方面，新政有所突破。广东省对此先行试点，在未经政府许可的前提下，允许这样的土地进行交易。当然，现实中农民依然受制于集体所有制和它丑陋的面孔。只有更加符合政治法则的改革才能解决这一问题：将集体制规定得更为细致，并将村级领导权放开，党的书记、秘书等职位可以进行名副其实的竞争选举，最好包括无党派候选人。
如此改革并没有击中要害，实为遗憾。但是即便没有它，党在土地改革上的步伐也显得过于谨慎。但是，重新审视30年前这一划时代的改革，我们有必要记住以下特点：改革小步进行，而非大跨度推进，且经常走两步退一步。在围绕着毛泽东思想的要义——集体土地所有制——而小心翼翼行走的背景下，党可能正在为实现农村社会转型的承诺而播下了种子。
[ 本帖最后由 langxianping 于 2008-11-10 04:38 编辑 ] 没人关注？ 几千年来，土地问题一直是中国社会动蒎的根源，只到新中国成立，才真正实现了耕者有其田，但其后的集体化，又使所有权虚无化，家民生产积极性大幅下降，包产承包较好的解决了积极性的问题，但随着城市化进展，又面临着规模小而效率低下的难题。事实上，即使土地完全私有，也同样无法改变家民的处境。
近些年农民处境的改变，其本质是工业化和城市化，集体所有的土地承包其实为农民留下了最后一条退路，不行了回家种地总行吧，这一制度使城市化进程具有很大的可逆性和弹性，最大限度地维持了中国的稳定。比如说目前广东大量工厂倒闭，工人闹事的不多，为什么呢，还有家乡可回是一个主因。当然咱中国农民善良，忍让的传统也起了很大的作用。
土地使用权的转让，一方面让农民一次性增加了资产，象是发了一笔遗散费，但如果农民变现了这笔费用，就彻底没退路了，所以说
说到征地问题其是只是城镇附近的，而且这部分农民一般比较富裕，很难说是农民的主流，但目前征地矛盾主要集中在这批人身上。真正说的农民问题是离城市较远的这一部分占绝对多数的农民，要么在家种田，要么离井背乡去打工。这占绝大多数的农民其实与政府矛盾较少，一是目前国家对农业基本不征税，还有补贴，虽然这些钱不一定到自己手上，但起码没问自己要钱，所以一般不会产生矛盾。二是年轻点的都出去打工了，在家的基本上老弱妇幼，连年青点的村干部都走了，（我老家情况是这样的，父母亲小时侯生活的山村，记得小时侯经常过年节时，常听亲戚们讲到水源，干部欺人之类的，如今只有三户人了，多楼通过打工到镇里盖房，好点的就留在打工的城市里了，基本是想怎么种就怎么种），也就是种点地挣点口粮，所以矛盾也不多，。
土地流转改革，目的一是进一步促进城市化，有点象圈地运动，当然是比较温和的一种。二是最大限度的使城市化能慢步有序进行，三是保留有点余地，这就是土地集体所有，实在不行时，国家还可以赎买回来，这样就能使国家对城市化进程留有一点最后的控制，这对社会的稳定是非常有用的。
其实中国的改革思路一直是这样的，也就是渐进式，摸着石头过河的提法，其是就是邓对西方的最清醒的认识和提防的情况下提出来的，否则照搬西方的就行了，还摸什么呢（上世纪八十年代末这种观念是很流行了），过去没有实行休克疗法，现在也不会一下子土地私有化。这样做最大限度地维持了社会的稳定，从近30年来的效果看，是值得肯定的，在内外交困的国际环境下，中国不但避免了大的社会动荡，保持了稳定快速的经济增长，同时最大限度地保持了自主性，使得中国在所有新经济体中可以说对国际金融抢劫者具有最强的抵抗力，自然就保住了自己的话语权。
当然这种稳定是部分国际人士不愿意看到的，混水摸鱼，水不混，想摸鱼的部分国际人士的心愿当然无法达成了。美国金融危机的实质就是没能抢劫到中国，所以只好从次债危机变成金融危机了。其实美国的经济周期是很明显的，但这长达二十多年的繁荣，一是通过对日本的剪羊毛，渡过了八十年度末的衰退，二是通过对东亚的剪羊毛，渡过了世纪初的衰退。如果中国象日本那样没有自主权，汇率在去年大幅上升，美国金融危机根本不可能发生，只少也要多支撑几年才会发生。但中国自主的金融秩序，使美国的这次剪羊毛没能顺利完成，衰退就无法避免了。
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