On the eve of the Third Plenary Session, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) introduced the first organizational law for rural area management, set to be implemented starting from next summer. Analysts believe that by strengthening control over rural land and resources, the CCP aims to firmly grasp all resources in the countryside.
On June 28, the CCP announced that the “Rural Collective Economic Organization Law” has been passed by the Standing Committee of the Fourteenth National People’s Congress and will be implemented from May 1, 2025. This law once again clarified that the ownership of land belongs to the collective, with farmers only having the right to use the land. The law also divides the so-called “rural collective economic organizations” into township-level, village-level, and group-level, comprehensively regulating farmers and land control.
Independent commentator residing in the United States, Cai Shunkun, told Epoch Times that CCP leader Xi Jinping is gradually pulling China back to the era of Mao Zedong.
He stated, “The introduction of this rural law means that the main purpose of the Third Plenary Session is for all resources, whether it is manpower, food, land, mineral resources, to return to the hands of the Communist Party. The so-called deepening reform claimed by the authorities is nothing but further strengthening the absolute control of the Communist Party, so marketization basically has no future.”
Honorary chief editor of “Beijing Spring”, Hu Ping, told Epoch Times, “Originally, for Chinese agriculture to further develop, land privatization was needed, but the introduction of this law signifies that the CCP authorities fundamentally have no intention of promoting privatization, and it foreshadows that the Third Plenary Session will no longer have the expected liberalization policies.”
North American investment advisor Mike Sun told Epoch Times that as the Chinese economy sharply declines, the CCP is increasingly concerned about losing control over rural areas. “After the CCP seized power, through the so-called ‘land reform movement,’ they slaughtered hundreds of thousands, even millions of rural gentry landlords, seized their land, and quickly gained full control of the countryside. This ‘Rural Collective Economic Organization Law’ serves the same purpose: by strengthening control over rural land and resources, firmly controlling all resources in the countryside. In addition, although the system of land contract responsibility in rural areas is renewed, it still needs to be resolved at the legal level, and the purpose of this law’s introduction is to address this issue.”
The so-called “rural land contract responsibility system” was introduced at the Third Plenary Session of the Eleventh Central Committee of the CCP in 1978. At that time, facing the complete collapse of the Chinese economy after the Cultural Revolution and widespread public grievances, the CCP released a bit of freedom to the Chinese people, thereby averting the first legitimacy crisis of the regime after seizing power.
At that time, in rural areas, the People’s Communes that caused countless tragic events were abolished, and policies such as the household responsibility system were implemented, giving farmers the right to use the land. Farmers could freely cultivate crops by paying fees similar to land use fees. This measure inspired farmers’ productivity and quickly injected vitality into the rural economy.
However, CCP party media, in summarizing the introduction of this law, stated that it aims to “comprehensively restore and develop the socialist public ownership of the whole people and rural collective ownership,” seemingly indicating a return to the days of “People’s Communes.” But Hu Ping believes that Xi Jinping will not regress to that extent.
As early as October 2022, after the end of the 20th CCP Congress, the emblematic institution of the Mao era, the “All-China Federation of Supply and Marketing Cooperatives” – the “Supply and Marketing Cooperative,” was resurrected, and supply and marketing cooperatives quickly emerged across China, seemingly following a step-by-step approach to bring China’s future political and economic development back to the Mao era.
Cai Shunkun said, faced with the tremendous pressure brought by changes in China’s economic and political environment, Xi Jinping’s idea is to return to the Mao Zedong era, tightly control all resources, retain power, and indefinitely extend his tenure. “Now, Xi Jinping’s power in many aspects is very close to the Mao Zedong era, and in some aspects, it has even surpassed Mao.”
On the other hand, Article 18 of the “Rural Collective Economic Organization Law” also involves the rural household registration system, which could again lock the farmers in the countryside. It states, “Members of rural collective economic organizations do not lose (deviate from) the status of members of rural collective economic organizations due to reasons such as studying, serving, working, doing business, divorce, widowhood, serving a sentence, etc.” In other words, residents in rural areas will not change their household registration status for reasons such as studying, working, serving in the military, or changes in marital status, and will still hold rural household registration.
After the CCP seized power in 1949, it immediately enforced a household registration system nationwide, not allowing farmers to work and live in the cities. Those with rural household registration could not buy grain at state-run stores, and their children couldn’t attend schools in the cities. The children of farmers could only be farmers again, without medical insurance or retirement pensions. At that time, the 360 million holders of rural household registration became second-class citizens in Chinese society.
In 1958, the CCP launched the “Great Leap Forward” and the people’s commune movement in rural areas, blindly pursuing high speed and high indices, leading to various “man-made disasters” such as the prevalence of inflated reports and communist winds, causing the three-year “Great Famine” from 1959 to 1961. The CCP then falsely claimed it as “three years of natural disasters.” To save face, the CCP stationed militia and troops at village entrances, preventing farmers from fleeing for food, even depriving them of their right to beg for food, resulting in a large number of farmers starving to death in rural areas. Independent scholars in the East and the West estimate that at least 35 to 40 million people died of hunger.
In 1979, addressing the people’s communes and the rural household registration system of the CCP, Dong Fuxie, known as the “Master of Economics of a Generation” and former director of the Economic Research Institute of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, when discussing the people’s communes with a visiting American economist, directly told the latter, “The people’s commune is serfdom.” At that time, the translator, Wen Guanzhong, hesitated somewhat, fearing that such a translation might not be appropriate, but Dong Fuxie said, “Just translate directly, tell him, the people’s commune is serfdom.”
Cai Shunkun said, “Nothing truly belongs to the farmers. The homestead that farmers live on is essentially collectively owned, and farmers cannot buy or sell homesteads. The next step may be to gradually reclaim the land that was ‘contracted to households’ in the past through collective ownership, all free of charge, and this is the foreseeable situation in the future.”
“After the 18th Congress, through anti-corruption, Xi cleared out a large number of high-level political opponents, consolidating his power, and at the same time, he made enemies on all sides within the Party, so he dare not relinquish power. He knows that once he loses power, neither he nor his family can survive, so he is determined to cling to power,” he said.