Will Upcoming Land Reform Make Rural Hukou More Valuable Than Urban?

Follow us on TWITTER: http://twitter.com/cnforbiddennews Like us on FACEBOOK: http://www.facebook.com/chinaforbiddennews A Chinese netizen says in a post,"I live in Chongqing with a rural hukou (household registration). My wife comes from Hunan and has an urban hukou. After we married, my wife wanted to move her hukou to my hometown, but the public bureau said her hukou could not be changed to a rural one!" His post has led hundreds of Chinese netizens to heated debate. Let's have a look at the report below. In 2010, 195 government employees in Yiwu city, Zhejiang province, secretly changed their hukou to rural ones on the computer system. There has been a local saying that "any rural hukou in Yiwu is worth over a million yuan". This indeed refers to the land value attached to a rural hukous in Yiwu. Mainland Chinese media say such "deurbanization" moves are results of land values. Urbanization, industrialization and over-construction of real estates have greatly raised land prices in recent years. Consequently, rural workers have become unwilling to move their hukou into cities even if they work there. The reason is, once their hukou become urban they will automatically lose lands and therefore chances to benefit from surging land prices. Zheng Yuwen, former deputy editor of Central Party School publication Study Times, says that the value of a rural hukou can be much higher than that of an urban one in developed regions such as Yiwu. This is because rural residents have land, which itself is worth a lot of money. Zheng Yuwen, former deputy editor of Study Times magazine:"In Yiwu the land resource is pretty scarce. When local government expropriates farm lands for construction, the compensation is much higher than average income of governmental employees, even if it is not calculated at the average market land price of the region." However, a problem is that currently rural Chinese residents have no land ownership. They are only allowed to sell lands to the government, but not to developers. Cao Siyuan, CEO of Beijing Siyuan Social Science Research Center and a former member of the State Council economic reform committee, says that the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has deprived peasants of land ownership, which is almost all they have. That is why Chinese peasants are so poor. Cao Siyuan, Beijing Siyuan Social Science Research Center CEO: "Peasants should own the lands in rural regions. But through the movement of People's Communes, the ownership became collective, and then bureaucratic. Now nobody exactly knows who has the ownership and therefore the problem has become complicated." The land reform issue was a hot topic before the Third Plenary Session. In a Nov. 1 article, the Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU) called on the CCP authorities to return full house and land ownership to peasants. For a long time, local party leaders have generated revenue and gotten rich through taking land from peasants and selling it to developers. Insufficient compensation and unclear land ownership are the top complaints from peasants. Zheng Yuwen: "Right now, peasants can only sell lands to the government. So the government really plays the role of an intermediary. As the middleman they will squeeze benefits for sure because peasants cannot sell the lands to anyone else. They can lowball the land price and then sell to developers at a much higher price, making huge profits. Why are local governments so active in doing this? The answer is simply the huge profits." Zheng says the Third Plenary Session will not approve private land ownership, but will approve reform of "Same Region, Same Price". The so-called principle of"Same Region, Same Price" will allow peasants to bypass the "middlemen" that are local governments and directly sell lands to developers. This also allows peasants to sell their lands at the same prices that the authorities do. Zheng Yuwen:"I think there is a good chance it'll be approved. Because allowing peasants to sell lands will, for one thing, lead to lower housing prices, and secondly, it will increase rural household incomes." Although the CCP leaders Xi Jinping and Li Keqiang made their promise of carrying out reforms, it is an undeniable fact that local party officials have become accustomed to relying on land sales for revenue. With the huge amounts of debts owed by many local governments, how will the central government overcome resistance from local officials to make real changes with land reforms? This is another big trouble for the party leaders. Zou Xiaoyun is a deputy chief engineer of Land Surveying and Planning Institute at the Ministry of Land and Resources. Zou told Shanghai Security News that there are currently 《神韵》2013世界巡演新亮点 http://www.ShenYunPerformingArts.org/