Source: SPAP Academic Salon

On the noon of May 6, 2016, Academic Salon was held in SPAP with the theme "Once housing land expires, whether to resubmit land transfer fee or not --A talk by four people". Associate professor Qu Wei-Dong, Professor Liu Tai-Gang, Professor Sun Yu-Dong, Associate professor Li Wen-Zhao from SPAP elaborated their thoughts on this topic from perspectives of their own disciplines, and other teachers from the School expressed their opinions and suggestions as well. During the Salon, ideas sparked in the debates, and the salon was very successful.

Qu Wei-Dong, associate professor, recalled the regulations on urban land system in "Constitution", "Property Law" and "Urban Real Estate Administration Law," and other basic laws. He pointed out that the principle "city's land is owned by the state" is China's basic land system, and it is also an embodiment of public ownership in the urban land system. China Urban Land Reform began in separation of land ownership and right to use, and provisions related to land use rights is " Provisional Regulations on Assignment and Transfer of Use Rights of Urban State-owned Land" , which provided that useful life of Chinese urban residential land is limited to 70 years. However, 70 years later, how to solve the problem? In "Property law", it only stated that "upon expiration of the period of use right of residential construction land, automatic renewal is considered." However, how to understand the "automatic renewal" specifically, and how to operate, the law in details has not yet been issued, which is the central point and reason of argument. Associate professor Qu Wei-Dong, based on the model of the relationship between land use life limit and land value, through the calculation of land econometrics, pointed out that the price of land use rights for 70 years and long-term price is almost the same, which means that residents' 70-year assignment fees are in fact equivalent to long-term assignment price. However, considering the nature of China's public ownership of land, it is acceptable to pay a small symbolic assignment fee of land use rights in order to achieve renewal.

Professor Liu Tai-Gang took human aspect into account to consider equity issues, i.e. the intergenerational equity between this generation and the next generation, to achieve the most equitable use of land resources, and pointed out that to achieve "system design of differential renewal", the core was to establish progressive payment and renewal system with free renewal area. For the differential renew of residential construction land use rights upon expiration, Professor Liu Tai-Gang suggested to design system according to the following scheme: Give each family a certain free automatic renewal area, to guarantee the humanitarian needs of citizens in housing; Charging the progressive renewal fee for housing area exceeding free automatic renewal area, fairly treat citizens' modest demand in the housing, and suppress the luxury demand of citizens in housing; Calculate family housing area by national co-ordination, and every family's  (that is, their family members) housing condition across the country should be all included in the family's housing area; whether free automatic renewal area or progressive fee renewal area, should be included in family's total area on housing, but housing owner has the right to choose which housing to be the automatic renewal area.

Li Wen-Zhao, associate professor, discussed the issue of land use right renewal from the perspective of public policy. He believed that we can sort out the theoretical logic and underlying assumptions behind the different policy proposals from a perspective of policy argument, for us to better understand the different policy proposals. Thus, he believed that, based on whether to apply and whether to pay, to divide different policies and proposals into four categories, and discussed the theoretical basis behind different types of proposals. In addition, from the perspective of policy evaluation, different policies and proposals were assessed, to achieve "demonstrable arguments" to find the most reasonable policy options. Finally, he also believes to distinguish the proposal of policy options and the process of policy decision, and to understand the rules behind policy decision. By this time, the issues discussed is who has the right to develop the renewal policy for land use rights? What are the rules of the policy decision? Discussion of these issues deepens our understanding to this issue. From civil rights, the purpose of government, sustainable development and operability points of view, he believed that China should choose the application waiver and free renewal.

Professor Sun Yu-Dong discussed the issue of land use rights renewal upon expiration from the perspective of land finance. He pointed out that the issue of renewal was actually a question whether to pay land assignment fee again, and was ultimately a question of money. We can observe and consider from the perspective of China's land finance, which means revenue and expenditure activities and interests distribution relationship depending on land resources in the administrative region by local government. Since housing reform from 1998, China's real estate prices rose rapidly, and in the process, leading to increasing land prices, which in turn pushed up estate prices, forming a mutually reinforcing estate and land price rising trend. In this context, with the rapid growth of land assignment fee, real estate taxes of local government also rose rapidly. Land transfer fees and real estate taxes related land financial gains entered into a fast-growing period. In this context, the hope relying on new real estate tax to solve land transfer based land finance issue has become a public research and hot spot. According to suggestions of Professor Sun Yu-Dong, the future real estate tax should contain two parts, land rent and public service tax. One feasible approach is to merge the existing land transfer fee to the real estate tax, counted as a part of the annual rent and paid annually.

Other college teachers extensively discussed land transfer fee issue on the relationship between "rent, taxes and fees", the role of government, the logic of China's development, the relationship between land transfer fee and urban public services, public opinion, the using life of urban construction and other aspects, and whether it should be paid. Salon played a good role in brainstorming, promoted interdisciplinary exchange and communication, and achieved the desired results.