【Editor's Note】
This year marks the 40th anniversary of China's reform and opening up, and it is also the 30th year that Shanghai's first land parcel for international bidding has been issued.
Land lease is a form of compensatory use of state land use rights. The land use right will be transferred to the land use (operation) unit at one time within a few years. Land lease approval is of great and far-reaching significance to the reform of China's land use and management system and even the reform of the entire economic system.
Since this reform involved many ideological, theoretical and legal issues at that time, in order to reduce the resistance to the reform and ensure the smooth progress of the pilot work, the research decision-making and pilot exploration of the entire decision-making and implementation process of this reform have long been little known. The Party History Research Office of the Shanghai Municipal Party Committee lasted three years, conducted oral interviews with more than 30 decision-makers, practitioners and participants who participated in the pilot reform of the Land Use System in Shanghai in that year, and tried to restore this vivid history with what the parties saw, heard and felt. The Paper (www.thepaper.cn) is authorized to publish parts of the book for the benefit of readers.
Today we publish the dictation of Gu Jiajing, a person who witnessed the pilot land lease approval in Shanghai.
Gu Jiajing
Born in November 1947, Haiyan, Zhejiang. Associate Researcher. In February 1978, he was admitted to the Department of Philosophy of Fudan University. After graduating from university in January 1982, he was assigned to the research office of the General Office of the Shanghai Municipal Party Committee of the Communist Party of China. In October 1984, he worked in the Research Office of the Shanghai Municipal Committee of the Communist Party of China, successively serving as the deputy director of the Propaganda Department and the Party Propaganda Department, and the director of the Science, Education and Culture Department and the District and County Division. In August 1995, he was appointed deputy secretary of the party committee and secretary of the discipline inspection commission. In May 1999, he also served as the chairman of the trade union of Wenhui Xinmin United Press Group.
Venue: Party History Research Office of the Shanghai Municipal Committee of the Communist Party of China
Interviews: Xu Jiangang, Wang Ande
Finishing: Yan Yanan
Xu Jiangang: Today, I have the honor to ask Mr. Gu to join us in recalling the research and exploration of the land lease grant reform in Shanghai that you participated in. Wang always had a heart, preserved a lot of materials on the reform at that time, and gave great support to our work.
Wang Ande: The Party History Research Office of the Municipal Party Committee attaches great importance to it and wants to include the process of the pilot reform of land lease approval in Shanghai in the scope of historical data collection. I happened to have some working manuscripts that I could provide as text material.
This pilot, according to my information, began from the side of the municipal party committee: in May 1986, Yu Jian, the research office of the municipal party committee, summoned me to go to kangban [Note: The general office of the Shanghai municipal party committee of the Communist Party of China is called "Kangban" because it is located on Kangping Road. The meeting was mainly a seminar on "studying Hong Kong, using Hong Kong, and revitalizing Shanghai's economy", and the speeches of Comrades Hu Qili and Rui Xingwen were conveyed at that time. The general meaning of Hu Qili and Rui Xingwen's speeches and Rui Xingwen's opinions is to revitalize Shanghai and study Hong Kong.
At that time, the first batch of five special topics were carried out to study Hong Kong, use Hong Kong, and develop Shanghai's economic problems. Since then, research in this area has been carried out intensively. The research office of the municipal party committee grasped the general grasp, and the Academy of Social Sciences focused on participating and began to do research. On June 11, 1986, the Municipal Party Committee held an enlarged meeting to discuss and study the real estate problems in Shanghai, which was the first time that the Standing Committee of the Municipal Party Committee studied real estate issues after liberation. After that, Yu Jian was the main focus, mainly focusing on the study of Hong Kong, the use of Hong Kong, and the development of Shanghai. Among these topics, I participated in the real estate group. In the real estate group, there were Xu Riqing, Yu Jian, Jiang Rugao, Yu Hanqing, me, and others. On May 29, yu Jian asked me and Director Jiang Rugao to go, saying that the municipal party committee had decided to organize an inspection trip to Hong Kong, with Zeng Qinghong as an adviser and Xia Keqiang as the head of the group.
Gu Jiajing: Before studying the issue of urban land and land rent, we began to do it. After graduating from Fudan in January 1982, I worked in the research office of the General Office of the Municipal Party Committee. At the end of 1984, about the end of December, Comrade Chen Yang, who was in charge of the research office of the municipal party committee at that time, called me and Comrade Xu Yichun to his office and gave us a task, saying that a teacher named Zhang Xuanhua in Fudan raised the issue of land rent for urban land and asked us to visit Zhang Xuanhua in Fudan, talk to him, and further understand his opinions.
At that time, after we received the task, the first thing we had was that the land rent issue of urban land was not only a major theoretical issue for our country, nor was it just a practical issue, but at that time it could be said to be a very politically sensitive issue, which involved Marxist ground rent theory and the national constitution.
Because for a long time we have believed that land rent is related to private ownership of land and is the product of private ownership of land. After the founding of New China, the abolition of private ownership of land also fundamentally abolished land rent. All land is state-owned and collective, and a system of planned distribution is practised. Therefore, Professor Zhang Xuanhua theoretically proposed that the issue of ground rent under the conditions of socialist public ownership requires courage and also needs to bear certain risks.
Secondly, we do see that the free use of land brings about many prominent problems, such as the units that need land cannot get the land, and the units that do not need it occupy a large amount of land, and the land is nominally the state, but in fact the unit controls it. For example, in the rural areas of the suburbs, the development of social enterprises, the capture of a large number of collective land, land is worthless, waste is very serious; state-owned enterprises in urban areas want to set up joint ventures, they go to the countryside to encircle land, whoever gives more land will engage in joint ventures with whom; enterprises do not have warehouses, many products have no place to put, peasants in the urban-rural interface department rent land, make yards for enterprises, peasants do not need to grow grain, and it is quite good to live on rent. Therefore, in terms of land use and management, there were indeed many problems at that time. So this is not only a theoretical problem, but also a practical problem that needs to be solved urgently.
At that time, we did not know Professor Zhang Xuanhua, although I graduated from Fudan University, I was from the Department of Philosophy, Professor Zhang was from the Department of Economics, and it was Hong Yuanpeng, not Zhang Xuanhua, who gave us a lesson on Capital. Therefore, before we went, we contacted the teachers in the office of the Department of Economics and asked them to help us arrange a time. Then, I went to Fudan with Comrade Xu Yichun. I remember that we talked with Professor Zhang for an afternoon in a very small and dilapidated reception room on the first floor of the Department of Economics, mainly to ask him about land issues and differential land rent. At that time, we felt that Professor Zhang's views were very new and important, and had unique theoretical insights. Therefore, we asked Professor Zhang Xuanhua to write another article on his views on the land rent issue to expound his views more completely and thoroughly, and Professor Zhang agreed. Before leaving, Professor Zhang gave us two copies of "Capital (Theses)" that he wrote. Around January 1985, Professor Zhang handed us his article "On the Inevitability of Land Rent in the Socialist Commodity Economy: On the Land Use Problem in Shanghai" to us. Soon, the article was published in the "Internal Materials" of the Research Office of our Municipal Party Committee and exchanged to Beijing. At that time, the internal journal of the Research Office of the Secretariat of the Central Committee, Investigation and Research, quickly forwarded Zhang Xuanhua's article. As for whether the Research Office of the Secretariat of the CPC Central Committee directly contacted Zhang Xuanhua before forwarding this article, or asked him to make some more changes or something, we are not very clear.
After Zhang Xuanhua's article was forwarded by Beijing, it attracted the attention of the leaders. At the same time, the research office of our municipal party committee also organized a symposium chaired by Comrade Chen Yang. In a conference room of the research room of Building 32, No. 165 Kangping Road, we invited Xu Riqing, deputy director of the Department Economics Institute of the Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences, Shao Jiquan, director of the Urban Economic Research Office, Sun Hengzhi, assistant director of the Department Economic Research Institute, Lin Peiying, director of the Municipal Institute of Fiscal Sciences, Yu Hanqing of the Land Affairs Department of the Municipal Housing and Land Bureau, Comrade Xue Yaojin of the Political Research Office of the Municipal Agricultural Commission, Xue Yaojin, Director of the Land Management Department of the Municipal Bureau of Agriculture, Xu Zecheng of the Municipal Transportation Department of the Municipal Planning Commission, and Liang Hua, a graduate student of Shanghai University of Finance and Economics (she studies econometrics). Wu Zhenguo and Tian Hanxiong of the Jing'an District Housing Management Company were also invited. In terms of Fudan University, Zhang Xuanhua brought several students to the meeting, such as Zhu Qiang, Zong Ping, Li Huizhong and Wang Zhan, a total of 16 comrades, who discussed together and spoke freely. Comrade Xu Yichun and I attended the forum and recorded each comrade's speech. After the meeting, the recordings were compiled into articles and more than 10 single articles were formed, which were published in the supplement of the "Internal Materials" of the Municipal Party Committee Research Office. There are three issues of deep impression, the first of which is Xu Zecheng's speech, [Note: In March 1985, Xu Zecheng, then the Municipal Transportation Department of the Municipal Planning Commission, made a speech entitled "Suggestions for Developing the Real Estate Industry and Opening Up the Real Estate Market" at the Symposium on Differential Land Rent and Land Use Held by the Municipal Party Committee Research Office, which was published in the 36th supplement of the "Internal Information" of the Municipal Party Committee Research Office. The names of two more issues are not clearly remembered. Ruan Chongwu, secretary of the municipal party committee, and Wang Daohan, mayor of the city, gave instructions at the three briefings, and fully affirmed and highly evaluated the research. On the basis of publishing a single article, I compiled a comprehensive briefing on the discussion of the entire symposium, entitled "Research on attaching importance to the problem of poor land rent at the city level", which was published in the "Internal Materials" of the Municipal Party Committee Research Office.
Gu Jiajing took a group photo with Yu Jian (middle), then deputy director of the Research Office of the Municipal Party Committee, and Chen Quanxun (left), head of the drafting group of the Research Office of the Municipal Party Committee, on the balcony next to the office of the director of the Research Office of Building 32, No. 165 Kangping Road.
In 1985, Shanghai was in a critical period of great development and how to develop. At that time, the municipal party committee was grasping the investigation of five major topics, such as the development of the tertiary industry and the Shanghai economic development strategy. It is reasonable to say that after the symposium, we should also come to an end to the study of the land issue, because this work mainly involves the work of the government. At that time, Zhang Xuanhua and I both wanted to continue to study this issue, and I raised it with Chen Yang, director of the office (I learned afterwards that Comrade Chen Yang's work was about to be transferred), and Yu Jian, believing that this issue was very worthy of further study. This work was fully supported by Comrade Yu Jian, so we organized relevant personnel to continue to study it.
On the one hand, Comrade Yu Jian continued to support us in deepening our theoretical research on the issue of urban land and land rent; on the other hand, with the support of Ruan Chongwu and Wang Daohan, he organized some comrades from government departments to study the operation of land lease approval in Hong Kong, and later set up a rent approval office in the Land Bureau. Probably in August and September 1986, Yu Jian followed Zeng Qinghong and them to Hong Kong to investigate, and I went to Lushan mountain with Zhang Xunhua, Jiang Rugao, and Yu Hanqing to participate in the "Seminar on China's Urban Land Economy" jointly organized by the Ministry of Urban and Rural Development, the China Housing Research Association, and the Wuhan Real Estate Economic Research Association. The seminar focused on the nature of urban land, the need to use urban land for a fee, the basis for the collection of urban land use fees, the composition of urban land use fees, and the distribution and use of urban land use fees. After I returned, I wrote a briefing on the seminar entitled "Several Issues in the Study of Urban Land Economy", which was published in the 48th issue of the "Internal Materials" supplement of the Municipal Research Office.
Wang Ande: Land lease approval is not a one-step approach, first we must clarify the nature of the land in theory, and then there is a dispute over the tax and fee of paid land. At that time, we calculated the reserve price and term of land lease, and the simplest algorithm was calculated from the discount of land taxes and fees, that is, how much could be collected according to the 50-year, 70-year, and 90-year years of age, and took this discount as the reserve price. How can the land price not be eroded when the lease is granted? That is, how many years to collect according to the current standard, how much to increase each year, and how much to calculate in 50 years, this is the reserve price of selling a piece of land. At that time, there were two kinds of "disputes", one was the dispute between "taxes" and "fees" at the Lushan Conference, and the dispute between "taxes" and "fees" between the central and local governments; the other was the dispute between "houses" and "land", and who would manage the matter of paid use of land.
When attending the National Land Issue Conference in Lushan, he took a group photo with comrades attending the meeting in Shanghai. (Zong Ping and Hong Yuanpeng from left in the front row; Shao Jiquan, Gu Jiajing, Yu Hanqing in the back row from left; Liang Hua and Jiang Rugao in the back row from right)
Xu Jiangang: Did Professor Zhang Xuanhua later participate in the land lease approval work in Shanghai?
Gu Jiajing: It seems that there is not. At that time, Zhang Xuanhua and I decided to organize the results of our theoretical research in the previous stage into a book to fill the gap in the theoretical monographs on the land issue in China at that time. I told Yu Jian about this idea, and he agreed very much. Because Yu Jian is very busy, I am fully responsible for this matter on behalf of him. We asked Professor Zhang to first make a preliminary outline, make adjustments and modifications after discussion, and then organize a branch meeting of authors. The theoretical part was written by Zhang Xuanhua himself, and he also introduced two graduate students who were responsible for land prices and other aspects of writing. Because I was responsible for contacting the theoretical circles at that time, and I had also contacted the system of the Committee of Agriculture, the personnel situation was relatively familiar, so the rest of the actual work was selected and organized by me to write. Later, in the process of compiling the book manuscript, Zhang Xuanhua proposed to add two chapters on Hong Kong's land issues and ecological environment, and he asked the author. After the first draft is completed, Zhang Xuanhua, Yu Jian and I are responsible for reading, revising and coordinating the draft, and contact the writer, and the final draft is finalized by Zhang Xuanhua and Yu Jian. After that, I was responsible for contacting the Shanghai People's Publishing House. At that time, we did not have any funds to invest, after consultation with the leaders of the publishing house, although we received support, but to print 5,000 copies, we had to underwrite all by ourselves, there was not much writing fee, there was no royalty, but at that time everyone was willing to contribute. The title of the book was proposed by Professor Zhang Xuanhua, called "Land Economics", and the "Afterword" of the book was written by me. It is recorded that "land economy theory is an important part of Marxist political economy theory", "With the gradual deepening of economic system reform, the problem of rational use of land has become increasingly prominent, and the research and application of land economic theory have correspondingly placed an important position." Under such circumstances, we organized comrades from departments engaged in theoretical research and practical work to jointly compile the book "Land Economics", and "those who participated in the compilation of "Land Economics" were: Zhang Xuanhua, Yu Jian, Zong Ping, Wu Renjian, Li Yinfeng, Wu Shenyuan, Zhu Qiang, Zhang Zuxin, Jiang Jiahua, Zhao Tianzuo, Chai Xixian, Yang Mou, Shao Jiquan, Xue Guoping, Yu Hanqing, Sun Zhongyi, Lin Peiying, Gu Jiajing, Gan Changqiu, Yu Ruixi, and Li Huizhong.
In 1987, when Land Economics was about to be published, I also wrote a book review article entitled "Important Topics in the Socialist Commodity Economy - A Brief Introduction to Land Economics", which was published in Wen Wei Po through Comrade Jia Shumei, who was the leader of Wen Wei Po at the time, with the purpose of selling the book.
Cover of the book "Land Economics" edited by Zhang Xuanhua and Yu Jian
To tell the truth, we can't say what kind of role this theoretical research work played in promoting Shanghai's large-scale land lease approval in the future, but it can be said with certainty that Shanghai's study of land economy and grade difference in land rent is the first precedent in the country. The book "Land Economics" is also the first theoretical book in China to study land economic issues after the founding of New China, and in a sense, it has become a professional teaching reference book for colleges and universities. In 1987, the book won the Shanghai Publishing Excellence Award.
Wang Ande: Now it seems that Yu Jian's thinking on organizing research is very clear. One line is to engage in theoretical research; the other line is to engage in specific operational research.
Gu Jiajing: In April and May 1995, Professor Zhang Xuanhua approached me and asked our Municipal Party Committee Research Office to issue a certificate on his proposal and participation in the study on urban land and land rent. With the consent of the director of the office, on May 6, 1995, the Research Office of the Municipal Party Committee issued a copy of the "Certificate of Information on Professor Zhang Xuanhua's Proposal to Use the Grade Difference Rent for Paid Use of Shanghai Urban Land".
Wang Ande: At that time, like Cao Jianming, Gu Changhao, Qian Fuxing and other legal circles, Hua Zheng [Note: The abbreviation of East China University of Political Science and Law at that time. A group of people have also taken note of this problem because of the relationship between property rights and the Constitution. But what inspires them to think? I think it should be after Professor Zhang Xuanhua and other economists put forward this view, from the perspective of jurisprudence, they first explained the relationship with the concession, and the deep-seated thing behind them involved property rights, that is, property rights in ownership. In property rights, there is actually ownership and use rights, and ownership is the state. What about the right to use? The issue that the legal profession is concerned about is already a relatively deep-seated problem. But most of their articles are from 1986 to 1987. As soon as the reform of the urban economic system is proposed, the land issue in the factors of production cannot be avoided. Our original house was built by the state, and the housing management bureau was in charge of allocating houses, which was later changed to the allocation of houses by the system to which the employees belonged. At this time, the real estate system began to reform, and the real estate reform immediately involved the problem of land. Professor Zhang's article points to the core problem: land is valuable, but it is actually a commodity. Under the premise of state public ownership, how to interpret land rights? Later, Zong Ping, me, and Yan Nanhai wrote a book, "Ground Rent Theory and Its Application in Socialist Society", which is to talk about Marxist land rent theory and its application on the basis of Professor Zhang's theory. When we first started to engage in land lease approval, we wanted to find theoretical basis and found support in their research results.