By Zhang Yongsheng　

Date: 2004/12/26

Abstract:

Following the trace of rural land system evolution, this paper emphasizes the importance of market-oriented reform on coordinated urban-rural development. It is shown that although the family contract responsibility system can partially substitute land market, it works only for certain period before massive transfer of rural labor force to the urban sector. Now the limit of this functional substitution is evident, the true problems with the missing of a land market will emerge. The formation of a formal rural land market and optimal ownership structure over farmland depend on the clarification of farm land ownership. Under current land system and the demarcation between the cities and countryside, it is hard to form a benevolent circle between industrialization, urbanization and an efficient agriculture, which has impeded the coordinated urban-rural development.