Changing farmland distribution in China

This paper utilizes both the national statistics and the survey data from the China Household Income Project to explore the characteristics of land transfer as well as the current state of farmland concentration in rural China. The findings suggest the following. First, China has seen a steady rise in land concentration since the 1990s, and the rapid increase in land transfer since the 2000s has contributed to the rising concentration of land. Second, the rural cadres play an important role in the process of land consolidation and they have rented significantly more land than others.