China promotes household contract system for collective forest land

BEIJING—China will promote household contract system in the management of collective forest land and ownership of wood, deemed an important reform to boost the enthusiasm of farmers and help them get rich quickly.
In the reform, farmers will become major “forest operators” through signing contracts while the nature of collective ownership remains unchanged. A political bureau meeting of the Communist Party of China Central Committee discussed a program to push forward reform of the collective forest rights Monday.
The meeting said that the reform would get farmers more involved in the planting and growing of trees, spur their commitment to forestry operations, increase their income and promote the conservation culture. It called the collective forest rights system reform a significant and far-reaching transformation of China’s rural relationship of production.
It called for ensuring equal access to operating rights among farmers and guaranteeing their rights to know, to participate in and their rights in the decision-making process. It said the reform aims at gradually forming a sound development mechanism for collective forests.
China’s agricultural production experienced a boost with the widespread adoption of the household contract responsibility system with remuneration linked to output in the 1980s. The reform made rural households contractors of farm land, greatly boosting their production enthusiasm and agricultural production.
Monday’s meeting was presided over by Hu Jintao, General Secretary of the CPC Central Committee. The meeting also endorsed a five-year plan for the Party’s corruption prevention and punishment and deliberated a provisional regulation on the tenure system of Party congress delegates.

—Xinhua