On the Asymmetric Interest Conflict and Cultivated Land Protection

China has the most stringent farmland protection system in the world,but the cultivated land quantity is still decreasing year by year.Inappropriate treatment for interest conflicts in cultivated land protection is the fundamental reason.To enhance the performance of cultivated land protection,it is imperative to develop a clear understanding of the interest conflicts in cultivated land protection.This paper aims to explore the asymmetric interest conflicts in cultivated land protection,which mainly include as follows:1) the conflicts between cultivated land protection cost and benefit,specifically expressed as accounting cost and labor costs,accounting cost and opportunity cost,social costs and personal cost,and market value and non-market value;2) the conflicts between cultivated land occupation-supplement balance and coordination of regional land use.Policies enforcing local governments to achieve the cultivated land occupation-supplement balance would restrain regional comparative advantages and impede regional economical cooperation because of a range of regional land resource endowment,levels of economical development,and the scale of migration and demands for construction land;3) the conflicts between allocation of land revenue and rational land use,which means that cultivated land conversion can gain more economic benefits,resulting in greater unfairness in land resource allocation.Moreover,current expropriating compensation does not account for ecological and social value of cultivated land and consequently underestimate such value.From the perspective of earnings,cultivated land protection is uneconomical;and 4) the conflicts between cultivated land resource protection and assets management.Most of policies concerning cultivated land protection place emphasis on how to maintain the dynamic balance between the amount and natural productivity of cultivated land.However,it appears to be ignored that cultivated land is not only a kind of natural resource but also an asset.Asset management is critical to improving the performance of cultivated land protection.Based on the analysis of asymmetric interest conflicts in cultivated land protection,two measures would be effective to address these issues and stimulate people's initiative to protect cultivated land.One is promoting cultivated land protection,e.g.,implementing regional economic compensation to effectively obviate the external economic benefits for cultivated land protection,making cultivated protection operated as an asset.The other is harmonious regional land use,i.e.,taking into account regional differences in opportunity cost and comparative advantages to make comprehensive planning and management on cultivated land,making cultivated land protection really become an avenue to realize specialized agricultural areas and scale economic benefits,constructing a mechanism to realize regional cooperation and overall planning and management,and improving reasonable flows of productive elements.