law - Farmers losing confidence in their future

Chinese farmers show a "decreasing willingness to make long-term investments on their land" is one of a set of troublesome conclusions from a major survey by a group of researchers, says Michigan State University in a press release. The study among 1,700 villages in 17 Chinese provinces is conducted in 2005 by Renmin University in China and supported by MSU and the University of Washington.
Less than 40 percent of the farm households received contracts or certificates detailing their rights, as required by China's 2002 Rural Land Contracting Law, notes the study. From 1999 to 2002 farmers tended to invest more into their land, the study says, but that ended in 2002.
While the number of land takings by local and provincial government has gone up dramatically, 15-times comparing 1995 and 2005, most farmers are not being consulted about the compensation they might get. In one third of the cases where compensation was promised, it was not given. In more than 30 percent reasons to the takings involved private rather than public interests.
The study will be published in full this fall in the New York University Journal of International of International Laws and Politics.