The impact of the land certificated program on the farmland rental market in rural China

The Chinese central government began the new round Land Certificated Program (LCP) in 2011, which separates operational land rights from previous contract rights to further improve the efficiency of farmland use. This paper aims to assess its impact therein. We use a dataset collected by the authors themselves of more than 2000 households in 2016, which was a random, nationally representative sample of 100 rural villages among five provinces in China. We first analyze the status of the LCP, and then use the sample villages wherein LCP has either finished or not yet begun in order to conduct empirical analysis with Probit/Tobit regression and Propensity Score Matching methods. Our results indicate that the LCP significantly increase the likelihood that household would rent in land, improve the amount of land rented in and enhance the intensity of land rented in. However, the LCP has no effect on land rented out. The paper concludes with policy implications for the development of the land rental market to facilitate land transfer and consolidation, and identifies potential research paths for further study.