Rural land contracting

The Central Committee of the Communist Party of China and the State Council issued a guideline for keeping rural land contracting "stable and unchanged on a long-term basis" on Nov 26.

Since China adopted the household contract responsibility system in the early 1980s, the property rights of rural farmland have been divided into two layers: the ownership right that is collectively owned by a rural community, normally a village, and the use right, which is held by an individual household that contracts a piece of farmland from the village.

While the existing law only states that a farmland use contract is valid for 30 years, the guideline said that the contracts will be extended for another 30 years upon expiration.