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Ningbo, China — The Chinese Communist Party has announced plans to stimulate and transform the country’s rural economy in an effort to bridge the gap between urban and rural areas. A plan announced Sunday will give farmers more rights, responsibility and flexibility in their use of the land, beginning with the extension of existing land-use contracts from 30 years to 70 years.

Current land-use policies, introduced in the late 1970s, allow families to contract land for up to 30 years. The system was an improvement over the collective ownership system that preceded it, but it has not allowed the development of large-scale production. Family farms are small and low-tech, dependent on human or animal labor rather than machines.

In order to develop a modern agricultural sector, China must introduce advanced technology and management systems such as those practiced in developed countries like the United States and France, where farm owners are in fact executives who manage their land efficiently and produce crops on a large scale.

China’s experiment with communist collective ownership under Chairman Mao Zedong’s leadership was completely different. Small plots of land were combined into collective farms, but the system was unwieldy and inefficient, with the farmers’ labor under the control of the commune and the fruits of their labor largely going to the state.

China’s agricultural sector experienced a boost when farmers were allowed to decide what crops to plant, and allowed to sell their surplus crops after meeting a state quota.

The Chinese government’s currently proposed plan would not only extend farmers’ land-use contracts to 70 years, but would allow them to buy, trade or sell the contracts, making it possible for tracts of land to be combined and large-scale agri-businesses to be created. The aim is to boost China’s rural economy and better integrate it into the national economy.

This would be in line with global trends, and it would also be a way to tackle the bottleneck resulting from existing rural policies. Thirty years of development have created vibrant cosmopolitan cities in China’s capital and coastal areas. Yet great poverty still exists in the countryside, especially in remote rural areas and in western China.

The growth of its cities has brought both economic and political shifts in China. The introduction of bank loans and mortgages has allowed the emergence of property developers who capitalize on land-use rights, which are granted by government officials. The state still officially owns all land, and the lack of transparency in almost all land-related deals has resulted in tremendous corruption and countless violations of the law.

In recent years the worst corruption has appeared in the areas of highway construction and other infrastructure projects, as well as in mortgaging services. Authority over land use has proved lucrative for many governmental officials, which has alarmed the central government. A number of such officials have been arrested and imprisoned for their misdeeds.

Cities had to be built somewhere, and the biggest losers have been the farmers whose land-use rights were taken away, often for very little compensation. Initially many famers just accepted this mistreatment, either out of ignorance of their rights or fear of the authorities. But in recent years there have been growing numbers of rural incidents as farmers band together to protest illegal land grabs.

China’s environment has also suffered as mines and factories replaced fields in the countryside, and villas and skyscrapers took over suburban agricultural areas. Factory waste has contaminated rivers, poisoned crops and polluted the air. Farmers at the bottom of Chinese society, who depended on the land and water for their livelihoods, feel desperately hopeless and helpless.

Increasing conflicts and confrontations between farmers and local authorities, including policemen, have caught the attention of the central government. In 2008 several local officials were sacked or sued because of confrontations with farmers. It is this kind of conflict that finally brought the issue of farmers’ land-use rights to the top of the Chinese Communist Party agenda.

Under the new proposal, famers will be able to treat the land as their property. In addition, the government has promised to improve rural education, healthcare and pension systems.

Will these policies bring the desired results? Will Chinese farmers really be empowered? There may be hard times ahead as the new rules challenge long-time attitudes and practices inherent in the authoritarian system. Petty bureaucrats at the local level may be the biggest obstacle to change.

Corruption will very likely continue to be an issue. Contractors or even opportunistic farmers may seek to increase their profits through bribery or other illegal means. As some farmers seek to buy up their neighbors’ land and introduce large-scale businesses, their lack of technical knowledge and management skills are likely to pose problems, and perhaps offer opportunities to unscrupulous people as well.

In short, the new policies are not likely to result quickly in a peaceful and prosperous countryside. There may be conflicts, confrontations, violence and turmoil, jeopardizing social stability. In that case, it is unknown whether or not the Chinese Communist Party will proceed with the reforms.

Yet the hope is that the possibility of being self-sufficient and generating wealth on their own will stimulate the people in China’s rural areas to make the kind of progress their city cousins have made, allowing them to play a bigger part in the national and even the global economy.

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(Dr. Zhang Quanyi is associate professor at Zhejiang Wanli University in Ningbo, China, and a guest researcher at the Center for the Study of Non-traditional Security and Peaceful Development at Zhejiang University in Hangzhou. His research interest revolves around the creation of a world state. He can be contacted at qyzhangupi@gmail.com. ©Copyright Zhang Quanyi)