如何让中国变得更加富有?

让农民拥有属于自己的土地

早在1940年,据共产党掌权尚有九年之遥，毛泽东就提出了他的“新中国”的计划。他说，将来共和国将会“采取一定的必要步聚”来没收农村地主手里的土地。顺着这条道路发展，在耕者有其田的原则指导下，国家将“把土地的所有权移交给农民”。要是中国能按照这种方案走，那中国的今天可能就大同了。

“必要的步骤”牵涉了大范围的屠杀。几十万甚至几百万地主及其家庭成员被他们的村民处决或活活打死。农民得到了他们的小块土地，但好景不长。50年代末 期，土地所有权私有化被取消，农民变成失去个人财产的人民公社社员。这成为当时中国社会中的一种剧变，这种剧变伴随着恶劣的气候条件和人们头脑发热般地追 赶美国的工业水平梦想，引发了导致中国几百万人丧生的全国性大饥慌。

正如我们的调查中所言，中国至今尚未能完全消除这种破坏。在毛泽东死后几年，人民公社被解散了。在邓小平领导下，农民30年来首次分得（但不是完全给予） 小块土地供种植，由此带动农产品在产量大幅攀升。中国农村土地改革标志着今天吸引着世界各国企业关注的中国经济改革的开始。但实际上中国最吸引人的是城市 的繁荣。农村从80年代初期出现昙花一现的繁荣期后就被远远地甩在了高速发展的城市之后。

这一次，实现真正的大跃进

邓小平依然固守住毛泽东农村秩序的两大支柱：土地所有权的集体所有制及防止农村人口向城市流动的隔离系统。后一支柱已在不断的冲击下开始崩塌，因为想维持制造业的繁荣，足够的廉价农村劳力必不可少。但前一支柱则仍然坚不可摧。

现在是时候唤醒毛泽东建国前关于土地所有制改革的规划了。因为这将有利于缓和农村的冲突，带动经济增长以及发展领导人梦寐以求的确切意义上的市场经济。给 予农民可以出售转让的土地所有权，并制定相关的法律系统保护他们，将会产生巨大的经济利益。如果农民能够用他们的土地作抵押，在拥有土地所有权的驱动下， 他们可以籍此筹钱来提高土地生产力。如果农民能够出售他们的土地，他们将筹得足够多的资本来开始他们的城市新生活。这将有助于促进城市的消费和农村非生产 性劳力的转移。从维持中国强劲的发展势头及减少不平等的角度考虑，让大量的未就业农民离开他们的土地而进入创造财富的岗位的重要性是不言而喻的。农民的大 批离去也有助于留守的人积聚土地并更加高效地利用这些土地。

没有任何政府，尤其是现在掌控中国的全部极权主义者，能够举重若轻着手处理此事。共产党的智囊团很明白对农村问题的不当处理将会引起国家的不稳定。他们担 心给予农民出售自家土地的权利将会在农村中再次塑造一个地主阶级，而且农民大量出售土地后进城也会给尚未作好接纳准备的城市带来巨大的冲击,产生如简陋坪 屋区以及犯罪剧增等等不和谐问题。

一部分官员也把农村土地产权的集体所有制看作是中国政府所坚称的社会主义的标志之一，而这些标志早已所剩无几，他们害怕这个写入宪法的规则的改变会引发新 一轮的姓社姓资的政治辩论。就现阶段就中国而言，产生不稳定的根源是缺乏改革，这也是农民强烈抗议地方政府随意占用土地的原因，农民热切渴望通过改革来实 现对土地的实际拥有。不可否认，农村物质生活的确比1949年好了很多，但是许多农民认为地方官僚实际上成为当地的地主，有时他们甚至雇用黑社会分子来将 农民从他们的土地上驱逐出去。

一些反对农村土地改革的人认为现存的制度有利于农民。他们指出了农民缺乏社会保险提供保障的实际情况。他们认为虽然农民对其所耕种的农田的支配能力有限，但在很多情况下，这些田地至少能养活他们。

这种论调的致命之处在于从90年代开始以来，至少有4千万的农民的土地或部分或全部被当地政府所盘夺，没有或只有那么一丁无补于事点补偿费。此外，保障农 民福利不应把全部精力花在减少负担让他们固守在使他们无所事事的土地上，而应是直接花在为贫困者服务的开销上。伴随着中国收入的强劲增长，以及低的预算赤 字和经济的高速发展，中国有能力承担起这一切，并按市场价值补偿征用农民土地给他们所造成的损失，不只对农业当如此，其它也应如此，这些做法都将有效保障 农民的福利。在此基础上，引进一种根据价值定量的财产税将有利于减少地方政府对收入减少的忧虑，这种忧虑来源于现阶段他们把出售土地作为一次性的财源。

否认土地改革最终将会弱化党的控制只能是自欺欺人。10年之前，几乎所有的城市住房都为国家所有，在过去四分一世纪中，中国最为世人所称道的系列成功经济 改革中的房产改革，使大部分房产都成功地进行了私有化。房产改革催生了一大批中产阶级，现在这批中产阶级极度渴望他们的房产所有权能得到法律的保障而不受 共产党一时的心血来潮所左右。业主们正在推选出与共产党无关联的业主委员会来维护他们的权益。现在出现了一批新生代的律师，与他们的前辈所不同，这些律师 大部份与共产党没有任何牵连。他们的出现是为保护了一大批房产所有权安全受到政府所威胁的个人。业主们都想有个安稳的环境来保障他们的房产不受侵犯。中国 的私有化进程正蓬勃发展，就连10年前在中国尚不见踪迹的绿色行为主义，现在也正活跃在推动中国公民社会的发展中。

虽然现在共产党的无意于土地改革，但他们也曾暗示说如果中国的经济发展需要，他们将不惜冒上巨大的风险来满足这些需要，因此才有在过去十年中许多国有企业 的纷纷倒闭

和私有化，这给中国带来了几百万下岗工人。中国领导人知道中国历史血腥剧变的一幕将与农村土地改革中失去土地的农民联袂而至；而目前中国政府正 在为保持控制还是要防止另一场剧变而头疼不已。别再彷徨，是时候把未完成的农村革问题作彻底决了。

翻译：febird

原文：How to make China even richer

Let the peasants own their land

IN 1940, nine years before his Communist Party seized power, Mao Zedong set out his plans for a “new China”. The republic would, he said, “take certain necessary steps” to confiscate land from rural landlords. Under the principle of “land to the tiller”, it would then “turn the land over to the private ownership of the peasants.” If only things had turned out this way.

The “necessary steps” involved widespread slaughter. Hundreds of thousands, maybe millions, of landowning rural residents and their families were executed or beaten to death by fellow villagers. The peasants got their small parcels of land, but not for long. By the late 1950s, private land ownership had been eliminated and peasants had become property-less members of “People's Communes”. It was an upheaval that, along with bad weather and a frenzied attempt to catch up with American levels of industrial production, contributed to millions more deaths in a nationwide famine.

As our survey describes, China has yet to undo the damage. A few years after Mao's death in 1976, the People's Communes were dismantled. Under Deng Xiaoping, agricultural production soared as for the first time in 30 years peasants were allocated (but not given full ownership of) plots of land to farm independently. This marked the start of the economic transformation that today holds the world spellbound. But it is the prosperity of urban China that mesmerises foreign businesses. Since its boom in the early 1980s, the countryside has lagged ever further behind.

This time, a genuine great leap forward

Deng kept in place two pillars of the Maoist rural order: collective land ownership and an apartheid system that barred rural residents from moving to the cities. The latter has begun to erode, due to the need for cheap labour to sustain a manufacturing boom. But the former remains firmly in place.

Now is the time to revive Mao's vision of a new landowning order. This would ease rural strife, fuel growth and help develop the genuine market economy the leadership claims to want. Giving peasants marketable ownership rights, and developing a legal system to protect them, would bring huge economic benefits. If peasants could mortgage their land, they could raise money to boost its productivity. Ownership would give them an incentive to do so. And if peasants could sell their land, they could acquire sufficient capital to start life anew in urban areas. This would boost urban consumption and encourage the migration of unproductive rural labour into the cities. For China to sustain its impressive growth rate and reduce inequalities, getting the many tens of millions of underemployed peasants off the land and into wealth-creating jobs is essential. The exodus would help those left behind to expand their land holdings and use them more efficiently.

No government, least of all the control freaks who run China, would embark on such a momentous exercise lightly. Communist Party ideologues are all too aware that a failure to handle rural issues properly can be destabilising. They worry that allowing peasants to sell their land could restore a rural landowning class, and that peasants would sell up in huge numbers and descend upon ill-prepared cities, throwing up shanty towns and pushing up crime.

Some officials also see collective ownership of rural land as one of the few remaining badges of China's professed “socialism”, and fear the explosion of divisive political debate if this bit of constitutional dogma is changed. In China's case, however, it is the absence of reform that is proving destabilising, as peasants protest violently against land seizures by local governments keen to exploit the land themselves. Though materially better off than they were in 1949, many peasants say that local bureaucrats have in effect become the landlords, sometimes using mafia-type gangs to push them off their fields.

A few opponents of land reform in the countryside say they are acting in the rural population's own interests. They point to the lack of social-security provisions for peasants. Though peasants have limited control over the land they farm, in most cases it can at least help to feed them.

The weakness of this argument is that forced appropriations by local governments have already deprived as many as 40m peasants of some or all of their land since the early 1990s, with little or no compensation. Besides, the best way to secure the welfare of the peasants is not to keep them trapped on underworked land but to spend more directly on services for the poor. With strong revenue growth, a low budget deficit and a booming economy, China can afford this. Compensating peasants for appropriated land on the basis of market values, not just minimal agricultural ones, would help too. And introducing a value-based property tax would persuade local governments to worry less about losing the one-off revenues they now enjoy from the sale of land rights.

It would be disingenuous to deny that land reform will loosen party control in the long run. A decade ago almost all urban housing was owned by the state. In one of the most dramatically successful economic reforms of the past quarter century in China, most is now privately owned. This has fostered the growth of a middle class that wants guarantees that its new assets are safe from the party's whims. Property owners are electing their own landlord committees—independent of the party—to protect their rights. A new breed of lawyers, not party stooges as most once were, is emerging to defend those whose properties are threatened by the state. Property owners want a clean environment around their homes. Green activism, which hardly existed in China a decade ago, is spurring the development of a civil society.

Even so, China's Communist Party has shown that it will take big risks if economic development demands them. Hence the widespread closure and privatization of state-owned enterprises in the past decade, with the loss of millions of jobs. The leadership knows that China's history has been one of recurring bloody upheavals by landless peasants; it is caught between wanting to retain control and wanting to avoid another upheaval. This is the moment to complete the unfinished business of rural reform.