EconomicsChina: New legislation: Protects small farmer's land, raises its market value, raises status of small-holdings income

Land of small-farm families 

re-valued by legal changes

In China, the economic status of farm holdings is vitally important.  Ownership of arable land was not protected in the period when the government wanted to encourage outside interests -- industrial interests, and also builders of new housing for the workforces that woud make industry function in the countryside, but also builders of new facilities from schools to shops to cultural facilities -- to buy cheap, leaving the peasants without with insufficient funds longterm to enter the new prosperity, each farming family having lost its land. Pressures often were in play, to the extent that sales of land were not really freely contracted on the basis of market values, unconditioned by govt policies favouring the industrialization process and the development of large commercial farms.

Our refWrite-experimental frongpage still does not accomodate video, so I recommend readers copy and paste this iframe code into your own player or other receptive page, to play this important Wall Street Journal report from China.

<iframe frameborder="0" scrolling="no" width="512" height="288" src="http://live.wsj.com/public/page/embed-97B1BF84_5EE8_4ACC_8F74_6DBFAAC768BC.html"></iframe>

-- EconoMix, refWrite Frontpage economics, business, labour