The Theoretical Logic and Practical Experience of Empowering Farmers to Increase Their Income through Rural Collective Property Rights System Reform: From the Perspective of Expanding the Property Rights Public Domain

In the new era, coordinated reforms involving interactions among rural collective property rights systems have become an important means of generating comprehensive economic gains and increasing farmers' income. Focusing on both "single-dimensional" and "coordinated" reforms of rural collective property rights systems, this study extends the property rights public domain from the traditional "internal domain" to the "external domain" and develops theoretical hypotheses about how single-dimensional property rights system reforms and coordinated reforms involving interactions among property rights systems can shrink the property rights public domains within and beyond individual systems and increase income accruing to individual rights holders. It then provides an in-depth analysis of the historical experience of reforms to individual dimensions of rural collective asset property rights systems since the launch of reform and opening up, as well as local practical experience with coordinated reforms of three rural land property rights systems and exploratory systemically integrated reforms of rural collective asset property rights. The study finds that reforms defining and subdividing individual dimensions of rural collective asset property rights can shrink the property rights public domain within a given system and increase farmers' income; incentives generated by property rights protection and the allocative effects of expanding bundles of rights are important channels through which such reforms operate. Coordinated reforms addressing interactions among property rights systems can shrink the property rights public domain beyond individual systems and increase farmers' income; complementary and overall gains arising from factor matching and organizational coordination are important channels through which coordinated property rights system reforms operate. Therefore, continuously advancing the definition and subdivision of individual dimensions of property rights and delineating and separating valuable collective assets from the property rights public domain can improve the performance of single-dimensional reforms. Local governments can improve the performance of coordinated reforms by formulating rural collective property rights system reform policies in an orderly manner suited to prevailing circumstances and by strengthening institutional mechanisms for factor support and optimized allocation. Rural collectives can likewise improve such performance by exploring locally appropriate models for coordinated reform across property rights systems, strengthening the matching and integration of different factors, and consolidating the joint efforts of diverse actors.