China’s New Rural Land Reform ? Assessment and Prospects

The Third Plenum of the 18th CPC Central Committee that closed last November promised to “comprehensively deepen reforms” and introduced a number of measures that seek to expand the role of the market in the economy. One of the key reform areas is land – a major source of social unrest in China – on which Chinese leaders have reiterated the promise of giving more property rights to farmers while granting them more freedom to transfer, rent out, or mortgage collectively-owned rural land on the...