Study on the rural homestead buyout programs from the perspective of marketization

Government driven rural homestead buyout programs with strong characteristics of planned-economy practically hurts the interests of rural residents and imposes a big financial burden to the local governments. Based on a survey data from Sichuan, Chongqing, Zhejiang, Tibet and Jilin regions, this paper analyzed the effectiveness of different homestead buyout programs under different property ownership scenarios. Results show that depending on the different degrees of government involvement, current two main types of buyout programs, which can guarantee the rural residency, can be further divided into four categories: including resident’s accidental participation in the buyout program, hidden marketing driven buyout programs, economy or society driven buyout programs, and government driven buyout programs. In addition, this paper also identified some associated problems of the homestead buyout programs, including the unclear buyout subjects, the imperfect power of the buyout objects, the negligence of the market functions, and the incomplete buyout mechanism. To further improve the effectiveness of the rural homestead buyout programs, this paper suggests: to improve the supporting legal system to clarify the ownership and use right of rural homestead, to reform the rural land registration and circulation system, to perfect the corporate governance structure of collective economic organizations, to build reasonable market rules for rural land, especially the mechanism of market price, and to promote the reform of the basic social systems.