Times have changed in China's rural and farming areas evident with continuous lowering of agricultural income and increased migration of people to highly-urbanized cities. The Chinese communist government has plotted an extensive economic reform in 2013 focusing on the agriculture sector as a means to regain the nation's stability.

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Unfortunately, politics and social inequality define why farming does not remain China's asset, way different from the 1980s agricultural boom at the time of Mao Zedong. More farmers are leaving their native jobs in the hopes of finding better means of livelihood in the cities, albeit the fact that China's farmlands are too small to generate huge income.

Land privatization creates an opportunity for growth but the Chinese government fears it would worsen social disparity when the wealth procures majority of the land leaving the poor with little to no means of living.

Luo Jianchao, a professor at Northwest A & F University, said that the way to resolving China's agricultural challenges needs a series multi-sector reform. Recently, President Xi Jinping proposed the awarding of lands to farmers in the so-called liuzhuan project in Yangling, the agriculture central district in China.

Iiuzhuan neither ends land privatization for large-scale businesses nor gives farmers full rights. However, it will provide the latter the means to farm in exchange for rental fees. This is also the government's way to ensure that family-run industrial businesses will not end up in bankruptcy, New York Times reported.

But critics like Tao Ran of Renmin University are not satisfied with the measure. He elicits that China needs to take bolder actions such as full land ownership and limitation of the government's revenue from state-owned farmlands.

Fred Gale, a political blogger, added that China's refusal to allow full land privatization is an apparent use of political control. Under Iiuzhuan system, farmers are given two options to either pay an annual rental of US$750 per acre or lease their lands from the government.

Either way, farmers only get poorer with just a US$500 profit from US$1,250 revenue per acre of grain. Rental fees could go as high as US$1,200 per acre in other areas apart from Yangling.

Tagschina economic growth, china economic system, chinese economic data, china growth rate, Environment