In recent times, there have been no more worrying topics than the rumours that land contracting should be cancelled in rural villages. Some say that the second contract expires, that the village is to be completely repossessed and divided; that farmers will no longer have their own land, and that all will be transferred to large companies; and that there is even a false allegation that “the next land will be planted to work for the enterprise”, which has become more perverse and has resulted in poor food and sleep for many of the people who depend on food。
Today we're going to say the same thing: the so-called “contracting out” and “contracting to recover the weights” are unfounded rumours, and there's no evidence of that
Hardest base, redhead file from central paper. On 18 march 2026, the ccp central office and the state council office issued a joint opinion on the pilot work of the extension package, which clearly states that the extension is carried out in a family-based manner to ensure that the vast majority of agricultural households remain stable in their original contract areas, that they cannot be re-inverted, burdened and severed, and that they cannot be used to adjust or repossess their land in violation of the law. One sentence will be translated: "your land, your right to contract, is yours, and no one can move!"
How does a good extension policy become “de-contracting”? The root comes out of the word “expired” and, along with the half-wielding “three farmers and bricks” on the internet, adds vinegar. The good thing is that the people's hearts and minds are being held back, and it's going to be a terrible thing。
Let's get this straight. The country's rural land contracting system, which officially landed in the 1980s, went through two contractual cycles: the first, 15 years, from 1983 to 1997; and the second, 30 years after its expiry, was expressly extended by the state. Right now, we're crashing into the critical nodes of the second contract. According to the data, between 2024 and 2025, nearly 30 million farmers nationwide had their land contracts expired and 160 million more would be contracted during the “fifty-five” period。
The word "expired" was passed on to the home country's ears, and the smell changed: should it be taken back? Should the pilot change the system? The more the rumours spread, the more the stories spread。
Honestly, we understand this panic. The feelings of chinese farmers and land are carved into bones, and the starting point for the contract is the winter night of anhui fengyang small village, which changed history。
During the cold night of 1978, 18 farmers in the small village, at great risk, placed red handprints on the contract of “big buns”. The fate of rural china was completely rewritten by this bold move. In the fall of 1979, the first year of the bulky land, the total food production in the small silos was 133,000 pounds, and the total oil production was 35,000 pounds — the total production of light oils was more than 20 years old; the per capita income of villagers increased to $400, 18 times the previous year
Since then, the responsibility for home-based contracting has become the most fundamental institutional arrangement in rural china. The people tied their days and hopes to the land of the contract, with a little wind and a natural panic。
But this time, the state has never given us land, but a solid “renewal gift package” — a 30-year extension after the second round of contract expires
Let's look at the strength of the country's policy, and in just three months there are four “declares” in each of them:
On 22 january 2026, chen bong-hoon, director of development planning, ministry of agriculture and rural development, announced at the new national office that the two-round roll-out pilot project had covered seven whole provinces, 221 whole counties, 349 whole townships, and that a general extension had been achieved for over 25 million farmers
At the beginning of february 2026, central document i was deployed at a heavy cost, explicitly proposing “a further 30-year provincial pilot once the second round of land contracts has expired”
Only two days later, on 4 february, the relevant departments held a further thematic launch meeting, in which they announced that in 2026, 29 provinces (districts, municipalities) with the exception of guizhou and tibet would be fully piloted
On 18 march, the 15 rules of extension, issued jointly by the chinese government and the national office, set the overall tone for the work at the highest level and locked farmers ' land rights and interests in the cage of the system。
It must be time for the village to ask: isn't it even more fair that, over the past 30 years, the village's population has changed too much, that old people have died, that newborns have been born, that married daughters-in-law have not been given land, and that the division has been disrupted
At first glance, that makes sense. It's impossible to land. In the last three decades, there have been a variety of realities on our land: some have been rented out, some have changed fish ponds, some have built sheds, some have been fitted with light panels, and others have been diverted to enterprises to create agricultural support facilities. Who's going to pay for all this? How do you price it? How do you draw the boundary? These things alone can cause a village to be sorely noisy that, instead of achieving so-called equity, it can cause neighbourhood losses and damage to farmers ' rights。
So the central attitude is never so clear: it is steady enough for people to feel secure, and it is safe for the countryside。
What about the new family? What, you're not even going to see the land? That's what we've been thinking。
The document specifically states that the legal rights and interests of landless farmers are to be protected by law, that the living difficulties of land-less farmers are to be properly addressed and that there is an incentive to resolve human conflicts through the distribution of collective income, employment services and the placement of public-interest jobs, among other things。
In the case of the contractual birthplace badge, the solution is particularly localized. For 380,000 farmers with less than 0. 3 acres of arable land per capita in the province, the emboss system provides for “land, profit, job, security”: collective mobile land, newly reclaimed wasteland, with priority given to additional family members; land for rural land in need, with a 30-50 per cent rent subsidy granted by the government; public-interest jobs to help people get close to employment; and direct integration into the social security floor for those with no business capacity or steady income. Instead of a one-size-fits-all solution, we really managed to get things done in the country。
As the first pilot province in the entire country, anhui was also at the forefront of the matter. By the end of september 2024, 4. 371 million farmers, who had expired in the year of anhui, had entered into extension contracts, with a rate of 95. 2 per cent; by the end of 2025, the rate of extension contracts across the province had reached 99. 4 per cent, of whom 99. 6 per cent had been directly extended to their original contracts, and more than 90 per cent of the country's inhabitants had remained stable for 30 years。
Not just anhui, the pilots throughout the country have come up with a solid approach. In ning shapingro county, for example, as a pilot area for rural reform nationwide, a “single field” reform was launched, which brought together scattered arable land in the eastern and western parts of the country's holdings, cumulatively consolidating 138. 5 million acres of arable land and directly reducing the cost of cultivation per acre by 60-80 yuan. Most importantly, the right to contract the land is in the hands of the farmers, but the only way to rejuvenate the contract is to put together the pieces of the land that have been fragmented, the large agricultural machinery has entered the land, the land has become more efficient, the cost has decreased and the farmers have earned more. As of february 2026, the pilot extension package has been fully rolled out throughout ningxia province, 377 pilot administrative villages have completed mapping, 257 villages have completed clearance announcements and 67,000 farmers have signed new extension contracts。
There are four key details of each farmer's interests, and it is important to keep them in mind, each of which is our "rights and interests":
First, to enter into a contract of extension without a penny. The document makes it clear that it is illegal to charge farmers in any name for the extension of the pilot and that anyone who asks for money is in violation of the law
Second, the extension programme must be publicized for a period of not less than 15 days. The village's extension programme, plot information and secured data are all on the surface and are monitored by the entire village to completely eliminate covert box operations
Thirdly, forced land displacement is strictly prohibited. The document expressly prohibits the forced transfer of land by farmers through targets, mandates or the inclusion of the ratio of the area to flow in the performance appraisal. The earth is for you, the seed of the seed, the flow, and it is up to you, and no one can force you
Fourth, to enter the city and not lose the land. The document specifically states that the legal rights and interests of land contracters who enter the city are guaranteed by law. Even if you move to the city, your home will be protected by law and you will no longer have to contend with the dilemma of getting into town and losing ground。
In the longer term, what exactly does this 30-year extension mean? An expert from the rural economic research centre of the ministry of agriculture and rural development gave the answer: with this land extension, our rural land contract will remain stable for 75 years. In the seventy-fifth year, the stabilization cycle that spanned our generation, our children and even our grandchildren was unprecedented in the history of china's rural land system。
And contracting this “old system” has brought new life into the new era. To date, nearly 4 million family farms, more than 2 million farmers ' cooperatives, more than 1. 1 million agricultural socialized services, with an annual area of over 2. 29 billion acres, and nearly 93 million small-scale farmers have been nurtured. The right to contract lies firmly in the hands of farmers, the right to operate with flexibility and trust, and the ability of small farmers to travel to modern agriculture without a few more hours of effort, both for rent and for wage earners, is at the core of the bottom of the contract。
And finally, talk to all the peasant folks. Instead of relaying untraceable little news in the crowd, listening to the eyes of the “bricks” is a good idea. When the village is organized to renew and sign a new contract, it is important to keep its eyes open and look carefully at each clause: the size of the right, the four to the borders of the plot are unclear, and the transient terms are not gruesome. That's what's really in your family's interest for 30 years。
After all, the contract was signed for 30 years. Our farmers have the land and they don't panic, and the days are going on forever。
