An Urban's Rural View

A glimmer of hope for China's farmers emerged from the Communist party's latest economic confab. Should American farmers care?

Maybe.

One thing is certain: American farmers don't want their Chinese counterparts' problems. The big one: Chinese farmers don't really "own" their land. Local governments bent on development or just plain revenue raising confiscate farmland all the time. Farmers are powerless to stop them.

That could change in the wake of the Third Plenum of the 18th Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party. The communique issued after the plenum was opaque, as such documents usually are, but past plenum communiques have often heralded real reform. This time the party promised that the market would play a "decisive" role in the country's future development, a rhetorical upgrade from the market's current "basic" role. Land reform got a mention, too.

According to the New York Times, the success or failure of the promised reforms could hinge on farmers getting more rights to their land (http://tiny.cc/…). The heart of the problem, according to the Times, is "a misshapen fiscal system" that makes confiscations inevitable.

"In many ways, China's rural problems are a knot of issues about land and revenues. Local governments have grown dependent on taking farmers' land for relatively little compensation and selling it to developers for a profit. They have been encouraged to do so because the central government takes the bulk of revenues, while assigning many tasks to local governments that require expenditures."

Fixing the broken fiscal system, then, would not only improve the nation's finances and governance. It would shore up local governments and ease the pressure on them to seize land. At the same time farmers would get more secure legal rights to their land. "The government intends to build on policies that allow farmers to lease out land," the Times says, "encouraging the aggregation of fragmented plots into larger, modern family farms."

This would probably be good for Chinese farmers, whose tiny plots limit their ability to mechanize. Would it be good for American farmers? China has become the largest foreign market for American agricultural products. With larger, more efficient farms, might the country need to import less?

Theoretically that's possible, other things being equal. But they never are. The same communique also suggested a modest liberalization of China's one-child policy. Even if farms get more efficient in supplying food, population growth could increase demand for it.

There are also physical limits to how efficient Chinese farms can get. Water is the biggest problem. There's not enough of it (China has a fifth of the planet's people but less than a tenth of its water). The little surplus water China has is in the wrong place, far from the country's bread-basket north.

And, of course, talk of more efficient farms assumes the reforms succeed. They might not. The problems are daunting. Vested interests that benefit from the status quo will fight to maintain it. Much will depend on the skill and determination of China's new leaders, President Xi Jinping and Premier Li Keqiang.

Still, a glimmer of hope beats no hope at all. For the sake of China's farmers, if not ours, you have to wish the reformers well.

Urban Lehner can be reached at urbanity@hotmail.com

(ES)

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