Beyond Shanghai— Guilin, Li River & the Longji Terraces

Comments · 1K

• BZ

  @bztravel · 3 months ago (edited) · pinned

  We read every comment and we appreciate all the inputs and corrections that you guys make. Thank you for clarifying the land use issue. We welcome and appreciate all corrections and details. We are not China experts, and we learn a lot from your comments. Many people ask about the contact information for the company that we use for our private tour . We did book the entire trip through <a href="http://chinatours.com/">Chinatours.com</a>, and here is their link. <br><a href="https://www.chinatours.com/">https://www.chinatours.com/</a><br>To our fellow travelers reading the comments: Please do not get influenced by any negative or politically charged replies. We found the vast majority of people in China to be very nice and friendly, so don&apos;t let internet negativity discourage your travel plans. Cultural pride runs very deep here, and the contrast between East and West is exactly why China is such a rewarding place to experience for yourself.

  247

• DA

  @damn671 · 3 months ago

  I&apos;m 67 years old from the Mid West of USA. My family goes on a big international trip every 2-3 years. We were supposed to go to Japan last year. But my son in law convinced the whole family to go to China instead. It is the most eye opening trip I have ever taken. China is AMAZING! Let me just say this.... You CANNOT make a statement about China unless you visit. You are only seeing 20% of the truth on American news or media!

  796

• SU

  @sujiaoshou · 3 months ago

  My...This the most EDUCATIONAL comment section I&apos;ve ever seen. <br><br>土地革命是伟大而复杂的，西方人理解不了也很正常，我就不废话了。<br>同志们，感谢你们的耐心和善意

  177

• GO

  @Gobi-Mala · 3 months ago

  “土地兼并”是刻在中国人基因里的恐惧，不然你以为为何如今中国很少见到流浪汉

  108

• SE

  @seekfunk3536 · 3 months ago

  China&apos;s rural land ownership rule is one of the most successful in history. It has effectively prevented the historical tragedy of landless peasants falling into absolute destitution, a fate often brought on by the endless buying, selling, and consolidation of land. This is of paramount importance in countries with large populations and scarce arable land. <br><br>If you visit India or the Philippines, you&apos;ll see vast tracts of land owned by a few large landlords, leaving countless farmers without land to cultivate. In China, however, every farmer has access to land. Because the land they farm is collectively owned and cannot be freely bought or sold, they are guaranteed a plot to cultivate for life. <br><br>This may not align with Western logic or conventional views on property rights, but it is a lesson distilled from historical experience. It serves as one of the most fundamental driving forces behind China&apos;s development and forms the very foundation of the country&apos;s poverty alleviation efforts.

  532

• AI

  @aiolosmai · 3 months ago

  Non-Chinese people always seem to have misunderstandings about China&apos;s land ownership system. In fact, this system can be said to be the most favorable one for the vast majority of farmers, unless you are not a farmer but a landlord.<br><br>How China’s Land System Actually Protects Farmers: Facts and Logic <br> <br>1. Why China Chose Public Ownership of Land <br> <br>Before 1949, land in rural China was highly concentrated. The landlord class, accounting for less than 10% of the population, owned 70–80% of the farmland. The vast majority of farmers were tenants, forced to hand over 50–70% of their harvest to landlords as rent. When natural disasters, illness, or grain price fluctuations struck, farmers fell into debt, were compelled to sell their land, and ultimately became displaced people. This cyclical land annexation was a major cause of repeated famines and social upheaval in modern China. <br> <br>Land reform and subsequent collectivization were first and foremost aimed at solving this problem: prohibiting the monopolization of land by a small minority and preventing farmers from permanently losing their land for any reason. <br> <br>2. How the System Works: &quot;Three Rights Separation&quot; <br> <br>China&apos;s current rural land system can be summarized as the &quot;separation of three rights&quot;: <br> <br>- Ownership belongs to the village collective: Land is not owned by any individual or company and cannot be bought or sold. The core function of this arrangement is to prevent farmers from permanently losing their land. <br> <br>- Contractual rights belong to the farm household: Each farming household has the right to use a plot of land long-term (currently 30 years, with renewal upon expiration) free of charge, and to keep all output from it. After 2006, the state abolished all agricultural taxes, so farmers keep all the income from farming their land. <br> <br>- Management rights can be transferred: If a farmer does not want to farm the land themselves, they can lease out the management rights to a cooperative or an agribusiness company and collect rent. Once the contract term expires, they can take back the land and farm it themselves. <br> <br>Key difference from private ownership: Under private ownership, farmers can sell their land, but they can also permanently lose it due to serious illness, debt, or fraud. Under the &quot;three rights separation&quot; system, farmers can at most lease out the usage rights; they can never sell the land itself — thus they always retain the legal right to take it back for farming. <br> <br>3. Real-World Effects of This System <br> <br>Effect No. 1: Preventing the emergence of massive landless farmer populations <br> <br>Because land cannot be bought or sold, no individual or company can permanently drive farmers off the land through market mechanisms, as estate owners or moneylenders have done in other countries. China currently has around 200 million migrant workers in its cities, yet it has almost no large-scale landless slum populations like those in India, Brazil, or the Philippines. Migrant workers who lose their jobs can return to their hometowns to farm; the land serves as their ultimate safety net. At the start of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, many newly unemployed migrant workers got through the crisis precisely because they had their contracted farmland to rely on. <br> <br>Effect No. 2: Giving farmers genuine choices <br> <br>- Want to farm? Use your contracted land permanently and for free. <br> <br>- Want to work in the city? Lease out your land and earn rental income. <br> <br>- Want to settle permanently in the city? Voluntarily give up your contractual rights and receive compensation (used to purchase social security and housing). <br> <br>The initiative for these choices lies with the farmers themselves. In contrast, under private ownership, farmers who fall into debt or face difficulties are often forced to sell their land, losing any room for choice. <br> <br>Effect No. 3: Enabling large-scale farming <br> <br>When large numbers of farmers voluntarily move to cities for work, their land management rights can be concentrated through leasing into the hands of cooperatives or agribusinesses, enabling mechanized, large-scale cultivation. The difference from land annexation under private ownership is that this transfer is reversible and time-limited — farmers always retain the right to take their land back. <br> <br>4. How Land Expropriation Works <br> <br>When the government needs to expropriate land for public purposes such as road construction, school building, or water conservancy projects, it must follow these procedures: <br> <br>1. Announce the scope and purpose of the expropriation in advance. <br> <br>2. Negotiate compensation plans with the village collective and affected households, with a public notice period of at least 30 days. <br> <br>3. If the majority of farmers disagree, a public hearing must be held to revise the plan. <br> <br>4. Only after compensation funds have been fully deposited can the application for expropriation be submitted for approval. <br> <br>The compensation standard includes three components: <br> <br>- The value of the land itself (calculated based on regional comprehensive land prices, adjusted every three years) <br> <br>- The value of attachments on the land, such as crops and houses <br> <br>- Enrollment of farmers into the social security system (mainly pension insurance) <br> <br>The law explicitly requires that compensation must ensure that the living standards of affected farmers do not decline. If farmers are dissatisfied with the compensation, they may apply for administrative reconsideration or file a lawsuit in court. <br> <br>Disputes over land expropriation do occur, but the vast majority are resolved through negotiation. Because land is owned by the village collective, the collective — as an organization — negotiates with the government, giving it greater bargaining power than individual smallholders acting alone. <br> <br>5. What Happens When Land Use Rights Expire <br> <br>Urban land is owned by the state; developers or individuals obtain usage rights for a set term (70 years for residential, 40 years for commercial, etc.). <br> <br>- Residential land: Automatically renews upon expiration of the 70-year term. The current interim policy implemented by the state requires no application and no fee payment; homes can continue to be lived in and traded normally. <br> <br>- Commercial and industrial land: Upon expiration, an application for renewal is required. Unless public interest necessitates otherwise, the government should in principle approve the renewal. A new land grant fee must be paid upon renewal. <br> <br>6. Summary <br> <br>The core logic of China&apos;s land system can be summed up in one sentence: Farmers cannot sell their land, but no one can take it away from them either. <br> <br>This system emerged under specific historical conditions. Its primary function is not to maximize economic efficiency, but to solve a more fundamental problem — preventing farmers from permanently losing their land for any reason and becoming landless displaced people. <br> <br>In terms of real-world results, it has prevented large-scale land annexation, provided a final social safety net for migrant workers, and preserved the possibility of large-scale farming through the transfer of management rights. For hundreds of millions of Chinese farmers, having a piece of land that cannot be sold but can be used permanently and for free is a genuine and tangible source of security.

  365

• LO

  @louisemann3306 · 3 months ago (edited)

  I hope viewers who watched this video also take the time to read the comments on China&apos;s land ownership, as the information presented in the video is quite misleading. As one commenter posted in the comment, “China’s rural land ownership system is one of the most successful in history.” Reading through the discussion may help people better understand why this view is held by the Chinese.

  157

• XI

  @xichg · 3 months ago

  I have been living in the US for 24 years and yet my share of land is still there in my village. My parents stopped planting years ago and now my family’s land is rented out some other families in the village. Before 1949 the whole village’s land belonged to 2or 3 families. Other people in the village either rented land from<br>them or worked as labors in short-term or long-term basis. My grandpa started working for the landowers at 12. You can’t imagine the peasant&apos;s happiness when they began to have their own land with the land reform. The current land ownership laws is put in place to prevent land falling into the hands of only a few families again. That had been the case for thousands of years of Chinese history until 1949.

  107

• PI

  @PICKLEDUDE-w4j · 3 months ago (edited)

  Honestly, a lot of Westerners completely misunderstand Chinese land ownership. Yeah, the land technically belongs to the &quot;village collective,&quot; but the local registry is ironclad. In practice, the plot your family has is yours permanently. No one is randomly seizing it.<br><br>​People think because you can&apos;t &quot;sell the dirt,&quot; it’s worthless. But you can sell the land-use rights, which functions exactly like selling real estate. You can pass it to your kids, sell it to someone else, or have the village buy it back if you quit farming.<br><br>​The only quirk is that you need your immediate neighbors&apos; permission to transfer it. The village groups adjacent plots together—like a mini HOA. If you want to sell the north side, the east, west, and south neighbors just have to sign off. Since it rarely affects their farming, everyone just says yes.<br><br>Now, do corporate agribusinesses buy up land? Yes, it happens. But it always comes with some strings attached. For example, a company buying land often has to guarantee jobs for those displaced farmers for a time period, or even provide them with free company products. Whether those specific perks sound too good to be true or not, the underlying rule is always there: corporations cannot just buy the land and tell the farmers to screw off.<br><br>​To me, this system is incredibly smart, and strategic. The real difference from the West is government oversight—it’s designed to stop predatory mega-corps from creating a landless peasant class. You can’t just dismiss China with a simplistic &quot;communism&quot; label. The Party didn&apos;t build the world’s second-largest economy by being stupid; their governance is highly calculated. As a 5000 years history agricultural civilization, they know keeping farmers secure on their land is the ultimate red line.<br><br>​If you look into the history, it’s actually fascinating. This system really highlights the clash between Western and Eastern philosophy. The West is obsessed with individualism and &quot;black or white&quot; rules (you either own it completely or you just don&apos;t). Eastern philosophy is all about balance and the &quot;Middle Way&quot;, apparently China found a perfect balance point on this problem.

  922

• PP

  @ppphhh1594 · 3 months ago

  American history is too short to foresee the land consolidation resulting from land privatization and the subsequent social chaos.

  258

• SP

  @spike-nx7pg · 3 months ago

  In fact, farmers are not merely tenants of land. I have a rural household registration; my parents own land belonging to the village collective, which they don&apos;t cultivate but rent out to those who need it. I can inherit this land and pass it down through generations. This policy is to prevent land from being monopolized by oligarchs; otherwise, the wealthy could buy more and more land, leaving the descendants of the poor with no land to cultivate. Regarding your point about the government&apos;s decision-making power over land expropriation not being ours, in fact, we all hope our land will be expropriated because we can receive substantial compensation. However, the government won&apos;t expropriate your land without reason, unless it&apos;s for urban planning, such as building a high-speed railway, because the government has a red line for arable land to ensure food security for 1.4 billion people.

  263

• 禁李

  @禁李-r9m · 3 months ago

  什么时候西方人明白了，土地不是百分百属于属于你的时候它才能真正属于你，那么他们或许就能说自己能懂中国人的初级思维了。那个时候或者才有了跳出寡头控制的可能性

  100