CHINA'S COMMUNIST leadership has marked a milestone in the country's reform programme with the introduction of a controversial land reform plan that will allow farmers to buy and sell their farmland for the first time.
The plan is part of the government's aim of doubling rural incomes by 2020 and goes some way to clarifying the messy issue of land ownership in China - some 80 per cent of new land projects are illegal, according to government data.
The reform is significant in China's reform policy, because the notion of collectivised land was one of the central tenets of Chairman Mao Zedong's revolutionary programme. As it stands under the Communist system, farmers are allowed to own the crops they produce, but they are not allowed to own the land itself.
"The new measures adopted are seen by economists as a major breakthrough in land reforms initiated by late leader Deng Xiaoping 30 years ago to avail farmers of opportunities to conduct scale management and new business operations," the Xinhua news agency reported.
Economists believe that giving a big shot in the arm to the rural economy is one way of mitigating the effects of a recession, as exports are expected to slow due to the global financial crisis.
However, the logistics of implementing the plan are immense.
"Such transfers of land-use rights must be voluntarily participated in by farmers, with adequate payment and in accordance with the law," the document said.
Land ownership is a thorny issue in China. Farmers have rioted on numerous occasions in recent years against local cadres who have sold their land to greedy property developers.
Under the current system, farmers lease their land for 30 years from their village collective, run by the local Communist Party secretary. Allowing farmers to transfer land-use rights is a major step toward privatisation.
Experts say the reform should lead to more efficient farming methods through larger farms and investment in farming technology, important steps in a country which has more than 20 per cent of the world's population but only 7 per cent of its arable land.
Its genesis has been a rocky road and the the reform plan was a test for President Hu Jintao's reform policies. It was worked out at Communist Party meeting this month, and Mr Hu is likely to have faced resistance from older cadres who grew up with collectivisation and believe opening up land ownership is giving too much away to the free market. The party's conservative wing still distrusts untrammelled capitalism and the global economic crisis will not have made older cadres more favourably disposed to economic liberalisation.
Driving the reform is a need to help improve the lot of the poor in rural China, which has lagged behind that of urban counterparts in years of strong economic growth, causing a potentially destabilising income gap.