Land Consolidation in Rural China: Historical Stages, Typical Modes, and Improvement Paths

Land consolidation is an important means to optimize land-use structure and improve the level of intensive and economical use of land, and it is also a critical measure to coordinate economic and social development and promote cultivated-land protection. Therefore, the scientific advancement of land consolidation is of great significance to comprehensively promote rural revitalization and build a modern agricultural power. In this study, we explore the history of rural China’s land consolidation since 1949 and divide it into five stages: start-up stage (1949–1977), exploration stage (1978–1997), rapid development stage (1998–2007), quality improvement stage (2008–2018) and comprehensive consolidation stage (2019 to present). In different stages, there are obvious differences in national policy orientation on land consolidation. The differences in organization and implementation entities determine that government-led land consolidation, enterprise-driven land consolidation and villager-initiated land consolidation are the three main modes of rural land consolidation in China. To overcome the problems existing in current rural development and boost rural and agricultural modernization, it is urgent to adhere to planning-led and ecological priorities, build a diversified input pattern, innovate the public participation mechanism and strengthen full-process supervision, scientifically promoting the whole-region comprehensive land consolidation in rural China