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Can China’s Transferable Development Rights Programme (The Link Policy) Increase Farmers’ Income? Evidence from the Land Coupon Programme in Chongqing

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Proceedings of the 26th International Symposium on Advancement of Construction Management and Real Estate (CRIOCM 2021)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Operations Research ((LNOR))

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Abstract

Rapid urbanisation and industrialisation have accelerated urban expansion which leads to the great loss of farmland. Aiming to preserve farmland for food security while also alleviating the contradiction of the shortage of land for urban development, the Chinese version of Transferable Development Rights programme termed the Link Policy was proposed. It calls for the land consolidation and rural resettlement in rural areas to create land quotas, which can be traded for urban to urban developers while the total amount of farmland keeps unchanged. The commercialisation of land quotas from rural areas has significantly increased local land revenue and thus the Link Policy has been popularized nationwide. However, as one of the crucial stakeholders, whether farmers can benefit from the policy implementation is urgent needed for investigation. Given that, this study takes the typical practice of the Link Policy in Chongqing as the case study to examine the impacts of the Link Policy on farmers’ income. Synthetic Control Method (SCM) was applied to evaluate the policy impacts with the analysis of panel data of 49 municipal regions in 4 provinces and Chongqing from 2000 to 2017. The result shows that the Land Coupon Programme in Chongqing has significantly increased farmers’ household income at the early stage of the policy implementation while the impact is not significant afterwards. Policy recommendations are provided including refining the Land Coupon Programme by establishing an effective risk assessment system and reclaimed land security system, Moreover, a fair land quota revenue distribution system is also needed to increase farmers’ income in the long run.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. A School of Public Administration, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Wuhan, 430074, China

    Zhengchun Xu & Xinhai Lu

  2. A School of Political Science and Public Administration, Shandong University, Qingdao, 266237, China

    Long Cheng

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  1. Zhengchun Xu
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  2. Xinhai Lu
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Correspondence to Long Cheng .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Construction Management, Tsinghua University, Beijing, China

    Hongling Guo

  2. Department of Construction Management, Tsinghua University, Beijing, China

    Dongping Fang

  3. Department of Real Estate and Construction, University of Hong Kong, Hongkong, China

    Weisheng Lu

  4. Department of Construction Management, Zhejiang University of Finance and Economics, Hangzhou, China

    Yi Peng

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Xu, Z., Lu, X., Cheng, L. (2022). Can China’s Transferable Development Rights Programme (The Link Policy) Increase Farmers’ Income? Evidence from the Land Coupon Programme in Chongqing. In: Guo, H., Fang, D., Lu, W., Peng, Y. (eds) Proceedings of the 26th International Symposium on Advancement of Construction Management and Real Estate. CRIOCM 2021. Lecture Notes in Operations Research. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-19-5256-2_95

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