1. Policy background and main content The central government attached great importance to the verification and registration of rural land contract management rights.
According to the No. l Central Document in 2013, all verification and registration tasks should be basically completed in five years, and issues such as inaccurate land measurement and ambiguous land boundaries should be dealt with. The No. l Central Document in 2014 further emphasized that rural land contract management rights verification and registration should be conducted faster and better. The General Office of the Central Committee of the CPC and the General Office of the State Council released a document Opinions on Guiding Rural Land Management Rights to Circulate Orderly and Developing Agricultural Moderate-Scale Management (2014, No.61), which systematically arranged the tasks of rural land contract and management rights registration, and explicitly explained policy principles and duties.
2. Policy implementation and impact evaluation Following the central government's requirement to expand the coverage of rural land contract verification and registration pilots, Shandong province, Sichuan province and Anhui province were selected by the central government to conduct the province-wide pilot program, while the other provinces conducted the program in one selected county respectively, with a total of 27 pilots.
In addition to county wide pilots, other provinces expanded the program coverage based on their conditions. Local governments of Jiangxi, Ningxia Autonomous Region, Hainan and some other provinces and autonomous regions conducted the province-wide pilot program; local government of Jiangsu, Hubei, Guangdong and some other provinces required each city to select at least one county to conduct the country-wide program. According to the MoA, by the end of 2014，29 provinces' (Tibet Autonomous Region and Chongqing city not included) 1,988 counties/ cities/districts had conducted verification and registration for rural land contract and management rights, covering 13,000 towns and townships, and 195,000 villages. The area of registered land was 12.67 million hectares. In general, the pilot program was carried out steadily and orderly in each region.
3. Main measures for promoting policy implementation In order to better conduct the pilot program, regional governments enhanced their work guidance and actively promoted the tasks.
(1) Regional party committees and governments followed the central government's requirement to take strong approaches in order to steadily and orderly carry out the pilot program.
The first approach was enhancing organizational leadership. Each province, autonomous region, and municipality directly under central government held meetings to promote the central government's requirements and arranged duties. Each province, autonomous region, and municipality created groups led by leaders from the regional party committees. In Jilin province, the provincial governor acted as the group leader, four deputy provincial leaders acted as deputy group leaders, and a special office was created to be led by the deputy provincial governor; In Sichuan province, the meeting attendees were expanded from six departments to 20 departments.
The second approach was reinforcing supervision and inspection. In Anhui province, the party committee leader and provincial governor inspected 20 county-wide pilot units; In Jiangxi province, hundreds of agriculture department division chiefs carried out inspection in agriculture-based counties; In Hubei and Guangdong province, local governments explored ways to relate government leaders to pilot units, in order to carry out guidance and inspection.
The third approach was encouraging grassroots participation. Local governments conducted promotions in various forms. In Qingshen County of Sichuan, a method called "two groups on site, two types of concentration and one type of entrustment" was used. To be specific, village committee members and contracted farmers should be on site; the contracts should be on public notification and signed in groups; those who cannot attend to sign the contracts should provide a written entrustment. In Huichun city of Jilin, given that the city has a large number of migrant workers abroad, the local government created publicizing and entrustment materials and contacted the migrant workers by fax and email, so as to ensure every household was notified. In Shandong, Sichuan and Anhui, village special committees were founded to deal with conflicts and disputes.
The fourth approach was standard operation. Beijing, Jiangsu and other 18 provinces (or municipalities) released schemes for the pilot program; Shandong, Sichuan and other 10 provinces released documents on the policy. The agricultural commission and lands department of Anhui province jointly released documents on tender, data security rules and recommendation catalogue of surveying and mapping agencies; the government of Hubei province established standard technology procedure.
The fifth approach was ensuring financial support. In 2014, 16 provinces ensured 1.2 billion yuan financial support in total, among which Shandong arranged 630 million yuan, Fujian 200 million yuan, Anhui 117 million yuan, Jilin 116 million yuan and Jiangsu 50 million yuan.
(2) The ministries performed their duties, collaborated with each other and enhanced work guidance to conduct the pilot program. In 2014, the MoA, the Central Agricultural Office, the Ministry of Land and Resources, the Ministry of Finance, the Legal Affairs Office of the State Council, the State Archives Bureau and other governmental units collaborated to take several approaches.
The first approach was enhancing work guidance. The Central Agricultural Office, the Legal Affairs Office of the State Council, and the Ministry of Land and Resources researched on important issues of rural land contract registration; the Ministry of Agriculture and the State Archives Bureau jointly released a document on rural land contract and management registration, which set the range and time limit for the contracts; the MoA enacted investment regulations on rural land contract registration and three other industrial standards for agriculture, which was all included in Announcement No.2062 of the MoA, and a system of work progress report was established.
The second approach was ensuring financial support. The Ministry of Finance created special transfer payment funds for rural land contract and management registration. Based on the funding standard of 10 yuan per mu (about 150 yuan per hectare), the central government planned a budget of 18.14 billion yuan for a five-year term, and 1.36 billion was implemented in 2014. The MoA allocated 28.5 million yuan to fund different tasks of the pilot program, such as training and informatization construction.
The third approach was enhancing research and supervision. In early 2014, the MoA deployed seven research teams to seven provinces such as Hunan and Heilongjiang. Later in May, the research teams submitted a report to the State Council on rural land contract and management rights identification and registration. During July and August, four more teams researched in another eight provinces such as Shandong, Anhui and Sichuan. They summarized the experience of the existing pilots, and drafted a document to state opinions on the issue.
The fourth approach was enhancing publicizing and training. The MoA started a column on the agriculture and economics website, published a series of reports on the Farmers' Daily, and released 22 issues of brief reports on the pilot program, in order to share experience among different regions. Four training classes were organized to train more than 600 people.
