Many participants have voiced concerns about the potential pitfalls if farmers lose their land and become urban poor.

In India, large numbers of farmers have sold their land and moved to the cities, only to end up in slums. This should sound an alarm for Chinese policymakers, said Chen Xingdong, chief economist of BNP Paribas (China), at a forum organized by the China and World Economy magazine, an English-language publication under the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences.

"I've been to slums in many countries in Latin America and Asia; it's appalling," said Yu Yongding, economist and a former central bank monetary policy adviser, at the forum.

"China must avoid that from happening," he said.

During the financial crisis five years ago, 20 million farmers-turned-workers lost their jobs in cities. The reason this failed to lead to major social unrest was the majority could still return to their rural homes and rely on the family farmland to get through the hard times. If those farmers had transferred their lands to others, however, life would have been much harder.

Policymakers, therefore, must devise related reform measures, such as social security protection and training, to ensure that farmers who no longer have land have adequate skills to find new jobs and have access to a basic guarantee of their livelihoods.

Some places are taking the lead in this respect. In Yangling, Shaanxi province, for example, the local government has established a risk fund to help farmers who sell their land rights. It has also made social security arrangements and provided subsidies for such farmers if they cannot secure new jobs.

Given the complexity of the issue, policymakers must adopt a gradual approach and set out some basic principles on land transfer at the plenum so that local governments, business interests and the individual farmers can bargain with each other fairly. In that process, farmers must be respected so that they have the final say in transfer of their land.

The author is a senior writer with China Daily.

(China Daily 11/08/2013 page9)