Collective action in China’s recent collective forestry property rights reform

Abstract

China's recent collective forestry property rights reform (CFPRR) is regarded as the third Land Reform and has been implemented to accelerate China's rural restructuring. In departing from previous top-down policy changes, the CFPRR has focused on local collective practices and actions. It indicates a shift in China's rural governance, away from direct intervention towards support for local collective actions. Based on a case study of Hongtian Village, the origin of the CFPRR, this article analyzes the process of insinuating collective action and the impact that this has had in creating a new cultural understanding and acceptance of collective forestry property rights. In contrast to the relative insecurity of tenure that can accompany many reforms of the governance of common pool resources, the paper suggests that the success of the 'Hongtian model' mainly lies in high levels of process engagement by local people and effective interaction between villagers and the government. While not addressing all the issues associated with the inefficiency of the previous collective approach to forestry, the paper suggests that there are many transferable lessons to be learnt from the CFPRR, both within and beyond China.

Determinants of successful collective management of forest resources: Evidence from Kenyan Community Forest Associations

“…This also implies that frequent government and community interactions can improve success of collective action. This results lend support to findings by Ostrom (2000) and Liu and Ravenscroft (2016).…”

Property rights integrity, tenure security and forestland rental market participation: Evidence from Jiangxi Province, China

“…The potential tenants have two concerns: (i) they may not enjoy the same level of rights as the owners do. Thus, they do not recognize the rise of forestland value and their willingness‐to‐pay price is lower than the willingness‐to‐accept price of their counterparts; and (ii) they may lose forestland via village‐level redistribution or state‐level expropriation for public interest (Liu and Ravenscroft, ). These reasons dampen the incentives to rent‐in forestland.…”

“…Since the introduction of the HRS, farmers have faced wavering forest policies, and the possibility of land reallocation or expropriation over their forestland is relatively high (Holden et al , ; Qin and Xu, ; Yin et al , ). As pointed out by Liu and Ravenscroft (), the collective forests used to be distributed to each village group via 10‐year contracts. All the available collective forests in a village were classified into good, medium, and poor ones.…”

“…He/she may lose the land due to population change, having daughters who marry outside their villages, migration to urban areas, etc. Therefore, the perception of reallocation when contracts expire is often used as a proxy for tenure security in the literature, see Mullan et al (), Holden et al (), and Liu and Ravenscroft () in forestland studies, and Ma et al () in farmland studies.…”

Collective Action Dilemma after China’s Forest Tenure Reform: Operationalizing Forest Devolution in a Rapidly Changing Society

“…First, Fujian is one of the most significant forestry provinces in China, and Sanming is the pioneer of the post-2003 forest tenure reforms in Fujian, and even China. Numerous studies have used Sanming as a typical case to understand China's forest tenure reforms [31][32][33][34]. Second, since around 2000, Sha County has experienced dramatic socio-economic transformation due to the rapid development of its nationally renowned snack businesses.…”