Govt must enact land reform

It is expected to authorize local governments to issue bonds and to focus on property taxes, consumption taxes, resource taxes and environment taxes as primary contributors to local revenue before the unified land markets can generate enough in the way of transaction taxes. All of these tax categories depend on a series of adjustments, which need to be clarified by the third plenum.

Another concern is the central government's redline, or minimum, of 120 million hectares of land that it said must remain arable to make sure the country would be able to feed its large population. China feeds one-fifth of the world's population with about 7 percent of the world's arable land. The proposed unified land markets should not reduce the overall size of that minimum.

The leasing, entrusting, mortgaging and transferring of rural land rights also must not change the use of the arable land. Mechanized farming will only become possible after contractors combine small plots of land into large farms.

Chen Xiwen, director of the rural work team of the CPC Central Committee, warned in a recent interview about the mortgaging of farmers' land rights.

"The Guarantee Law states that the farmland contracted by the farmers from the village committee cannot be directly mortgaged because the farmland is a farmer's life and basic means of production," he said.

Successful land reforms can improve China's agricultural production, create new streams of revenue for local governments and ease tension among farmers when their land is acquired.