经济学人下载:中国城镇化,你生活在哪里?

In the name of building a “new socialist countryside” (a slogan launched in 2005), local governments have been corralling farmers into new apartment blocks in order to free up land which they can use for profitable purposes. Officials have justified the practice as a way of reducing incentives for local governments forcibly to appropriate farmland and sell it to developers. Two million peasants a year have lost their land this way in the past five years, a senior government adviser in north-east China said in March. The new strategy often means the farmers are crammed into apartments with no backyards to raise chickens or store tools, and they face a longer journey to their fields.

以建设“社会主义新农村”的名义（2005年提出的一个口号），当地政府把一群群的农民赶到新的住宅小区，就为了释放出他们为了利益企图而物有所用的土地。作为一种减少当地政府挪用适耕农田并将之出售给开发商的激励机制方式，政府官员们已经合理化了这一实践。3月，东北地区的一位政府高层参赞说到，过去5年里，每年有200万农民因这一方式而失去他们的土地。新政策通常意味着农民被塞进没有后院养鸡或者存粪的公寓，而且他们还面临着下地要走更长的路。

Though officially sanctioned, the dipiao markets are viewed warily by the central leadership. Late last year Chengdu’s market was suddenly closed down. No clear explanation was given, but a Chinese scholar says higher-level officials worried that dipiao were being traded without land having first been converted to agricultural use. The risk, central officials feared, was that it would never happen at all. The market reopened in April, but the central government remains cautious. In Chongqing only 10% of the government’s annual sales of undeveloped rural land are subject to the dipiao system.

尽管得到官方批准，地票市场仍然受到中央首长的谨慎关注。去年末，成都的市场被突然关闭，却一直未有明确的解释。一位华人学者说，政府高层担心地票在土地还没有转化为农业用途之前就被交易掉了。中央政府官员所害怕的这一风险根本就从未出现过。市场在4月份重开，但是中央政府仍然心存警惕。在重庆，政府的按年度出售的尚待开发的农村土体中仅有10%的进入到地票系统。

Thoroughgoing land reform, of the sort that would enable farmers to cash in on the value of their farmland and establish permanent and prosperous lives in cities (and at the same time encourage larger-scale farming), thus remains stuck. One obstacle is ideological: for all their economic pragmatism, many in the party still regard collectivism as a sacred principle. Privatisation remains a dirty word. A more practical worry is that reform might quickly be exploited by the very forces it is meant to constrain: rapacious local governments and developers. These, it is feared, would take advantage of any changes to persuade farmers unaware of land values to sell their holdings at less than market rates. The numbers of poor, landless peasants would soar, creating huge instability.

通过进行土改，在某种程度上将会能让农民现金化他们的农田的价值，并构建出在城市里永久而繁荣的生活（同时也鼓励了农场的大型化），因此也就带有阻滞。一个障碍就是意识形态上的：相对于他们所有人在的经济上的实用主义，党的许多人仍然将集体主义看做是神圣不可动摇的原则。私有化仍然是个肮脏的词语。更为实际的担心是改革很快会受到那些本来应该被平抑的力量的剥削：贪婪的当地政府和开发商。被担心的种种这些，将会利用每一丝的机会来说服还不知道土地价值的农民以少于的市场利率出售他们手中所有的东西。那些贫穷而失去土地的农民将会大声申诉，制造出巨大的不稳定。

Reformers in Beijing argue that most farmers are far cannier than officials suspect. But the global financial crisis has strengthened the case for caution in the minds of party leaders. As many as 20m workers returned to the countryside when the crisis broke in 2008 and China’s exports slumped. Having farmland to go back to, many officials believe, kept the unemployed migrants from taking to the streets. As officials often say in China, “stability trumps everything.”

北京的改革者争辩到，大多数农民都比政府官员所质疑的还要狡猾。但是全球财政危机强化了党的领袖们脑子里对这些案例的警惕。2008年危机爆发的时候，多达200万的工人返乡，中国的出口骤然减少。许多官员相信，只有回家还有田地，就能让失业的民工不得走上街头。就像中国的政府官员员经常说的：“稳定压倒一切”。