Local governments in China are offering to buy up farms from rural families, offering vouchers for apartments in smaller cities in a bid to encourage more people to give up farming and move into urban areas, according to official announcements posted online this month.
Authorities in the eastern provinces of Anhui, Jiangxi and Zhejiang and the central province of Hubei are rolling out trial “housing voucher” schemes targeted at rural communities in a bid to boost the country’s flagging real estate sector and accelerate the mass relocation of rural communities, according to announcements posted to official government websites and social media accounts.
The move is part of a nationwide bid to resettle rural communities in urban areas, both piecemeal and en masse, as part of the ruling Chinese Communist Party's "poverty alleviation" policy and attempts to stabilize the food supply.
But commentators said it doesn’t look like a very attractive deal for families who have farmed the same land for generations.
Rural land in China is typically leased to farmers on 30-year "household responsibility" contracts, with the ownership remaining with the government. In 2016, the administration of supreme party leader Xi Jinping made it easier for farmers to be bought out of those leases.
In a trial being rolled out in Anhui’s Fengyang county from June 20, farming families who voluntarily release their leased farms back to government ownership will be given a subsidy, or voucher, worth 50,000 yuan (US$6884) to help them buy an apartment in a smaller, regional city, according to the Nantong county government’s official WeChat account.
Meanwhile, authorities in Zhejiang’s Changshan county are trialing a scheme that would set the value of the housing voucher based on the size of the farm being handed back to the authorities.
Details of the voucher deal appear to vary from region to region, but are generally being announced by village, township and district governments as part of measures to boost a flagging real estate market, according to announcements seen by Radio Free Asia.
‘Fob them off on us’
In Zhejiang’s Longyou county, voucher holders won’t get their hands on the whole lump sum all at once, instead receiving it in increments across a two-year period.
A farmer who gave only the surname Sang for fear of reprisals said his local government hasn’t announced a similar scheme yet, but that he wouldn’t take it even if they did.
“I’m definitely not giving up this land,” Sang said. “Rural land is supposed to be used for growing food.”
“It was handed down to us by our ancestors, so we could grow vegetables and have somewhere to bury the elderly when they die,” he said.
Some online comments appeared to agree.
Blogger Xiao An’s Reason commented: “Nobody wants to buy these apartments, so they’re trying to fob them off on us farmers ... they want us to give up our farmland.”
“They will leave us with no place to call home, and turn us into slaves forever,” the blogger wrote.
Authorities in Zhejiang’s Jiangshan city said they would be targeting villages that are prone to flash flooding and landslides, areas with dilapidated housing, and areas designated part of “land improvement” schemes, as well as areas where housing has been deemed to be illegally constructed.
“Those who opt for apartment housing voucher resettlement ... shall voluntarily give up the legal right to use their farms, and the right to build on them, and shall vacate their original dwellings and facilities and return them to the village collective,” according to trial regulations published on the municipal government website.
‘Hollow out the countryside’
A June 24 post about the move from the Hebei-based Sina Weibo account @Husky_who_really_keeps_cats commented: “What’s the point of this? If you can’t sell these apartments, then lower the price. They’re just trying to cheat elderly farmers.”
“They want to hollow out the countryside and mess up the cities,” commented @Temple_victory, while @Today_I_woke_up_from_my_dream added: “They have to take away the last bit of security.”
@A_turtle_is_smaller_than_a_tortoise commented that 50,000 yuan wasn’t much compensation for leased land on which people could at least practice subsistence farming and ensure that everyone had somewhere to live and enough to eat. “They’d be giving up a permanent benefit for 50,000 yuan,” the user wrote.
Other comments pointed out the rapid aging of the population, saying that rural governments don’t have enough people paying into social security schemes to be able to pay pensions to the elderly, while still others said farmers’ pensions were miniscule anyway.
Current affairs commentator Zhang Jianping, who hails from a rural community, said the scheme didn’t take into account the value of farms to farming families.
“They should know that farmers’ houses have been built with the blood and sweat of several generations,” Zhang said. “Grabbing their farms back with a subsidy of just 50,000 yuan shows total disrespect for farmers’ property rights.”
He warned that while the scheme is being trialed as "voluntary," it could soon become coercive, citing waves of rural land grabs across China over decades of Communist Party rule.
Current affairs commentator Ji Feng said the rural farms are often home to, and support, large families of up to a dozen people.
Farmers, who also move around the country in large numbers in search of work, have typically relied on being able to go back and support themselves through subsistence farming if their lives in urban areas don’t work out, Ji said.
“This practice will push people into a desperate, dead end,” he said. “If the farmers sign up for these schemes, they will have been severely cheated.”
He said the authorities under Xi want to reclaim as much privately controlled land as possible for government use. That could involve selling the land back into private hands for a huge profit, especially if it’s in a more valuable area on the outskirts of a city.
Translated with additional reporting by Luisetta Mudie.