Impact of socio-economic status on the implementation of China’s collective forest tenure reform in Zhang Guying Township, Hunan: potential for increasing disparity

The Chinese government is currently implementing a major change in its national policy on forest tenure and management rights that will have a profound effect on many aspects of forest quality and use, including rural livelihoods and development (Zhang et al., 2000; Wang et al., 2008). These effects will have global impact, as China possesses the world’s fifth largest forest area (State Forestry Administration, 2004) with 159 million ha. Chinese forests cover diverse physical environments, from tropical to boreal regions and from wetlands along the eastern coast to grassland/desert in the far west (Dai et al., 2009). The current forest tenure reform in China will affect only ‘collective’ forests, accounting for 58 per cent of China’s forest land (Food and Agriculture Organization, 2009) and home to more than 400 million people (Liu et al., 2008). ‘State’ forests, including nature reserves, national parks, state plantations and some ecological welfare forests, will remain under the control of provincial governments and industry-related ministries. Previously, collective forests were managed by a community organization that distributed benefits from forests among local households and paid infrastructure or communal expenses. The history of collective forest land ownership in China is rife with discontinuity (Wang et al., 2008). With the formation of the People’s Republic of China, the Chinese Communist Party confiscated private property from landlords using military force and redistributed it equally to rural populations (Miao and West, 2004). Between 1953 and 1958, the Central Government initiated the ‘agricultural Impact of socio-economic status on the implementation of China’s collective forest tenure reform in Zhang Guying Township, Hunan: potential for increasing disparity