The transition from "village" to "community" is a crucial step in breaking down the urban-rural divide and accelerating integrated development. However, as resources turn into assets and farmers become urban residents, the management of collective assets post-transition faces new challenges, including unclear legal status and difficulties in revitalizing assets. To better understand the on-the-ground realities, a joint research team conducted a comprehensive survey in Dujiangyan City, summarizing experiences, identifying problems, and proposing suggestions for deeper governance reforms.
Achievements: Managing the "Family Assets" and Steadying the "New Path" Identifying the problem is the first step to finding a solution. The shift from a village committee to a community committee signifies a profound change in governance philosophy and methods. Village committees operate with a comprehensive, bottom-line management model focused on rural collective land and economic affairs, while community committees adopt a limited-liability service model centered on providing public services to residents.
Regarding collective asset management, since community committees lack the function to manage collective economies, assets previously managed by village collective economic organizations must be completely separated from the community committee post-transition. While these assets have no direct relation to newly relocated residents in terms of ownership rights or benefit distribution, community committees are still responsible for providing public services to all residents. This creates practical issues such as who should manage the assets, how to quantify them, and how to distribute proceeds, often leading to property rights disputes.
Local cadres report that while management has become more standardized, property rights clearer, and finances more transparent, new challenges have emerged. Standardized management requires adherence to legal mandates and functional responsibilities, ensuring collective assets are separated but not removed from oversight. Clear property rights necessitate precise delineation between state-owned and collective assets, village-level and group-level assets, and collective versus household assets to avoid conflicts. Transparent finances demand robust mechanisms for financial management and auditing to ensure open and fair distribution of proceeds.
Understanding the "family assets" is essential for effective action. Quantifying collective resources into shares, facilitating subsequent transactions, and safeguarding residents' property rights all depend on a comprehensive grasp of the collective "three assets" (funds, assets, resources). In recent years, alongside efforts to standardize grassroots property transactions, Dujiangyan City has collaborated with finance and agriculture departments to conduct thorough verifications of these assets.
Using a mechanism that "identifies personnel, priorities, and physical items," the city organized forces at the municipal, township, and village levels to conduct a full-coverage inventory. Collective assets were categorized into three main types: community service assets managed by village (community) committees, operational assets managed by community collective economic organizations, and assets operated by community enterprises. This approach has gradually addressed historical difficulties in defining ownership and assessing the value of rural collective assets, dynamically improved annual asset ledgers, and ensured accurate recording and filing.
The city has completed the entry and reporting for all 2,348 inventory units (130 at the village level, 2,218 at the group level). The total recorded collective assets amount to 526 million yuan (including 189 million yuan in operational assets), with total rural collective economic organization revenue reaching 129 million yuan and collective land totaling 1.3045 million mu. During the process, 19 issues were identified, such as "funds not recorded according to collective economic financial systems" and "financial information not being disclosed or selectively disclosed," all of which have been rectified.
Revitalizing resources to turn "dormant" assets into "liquid capital." Merely managing collective assets well is not enough; they must be actively utilized. Local efforts focus on two main areas.
One strategy is to orderly promote property rights transactions. Each collective asset undergoes geographic coordinate and current image collection to establish a management analysis database. Relevant guidelines for rural property transactions have been issued, and the process is streamlined through a rural property transaction certification office, reducing costs and improving the transaction platform. Since 2024, the Chengdu (Dujiangyan) Rural Property Exchange has completed 260 transactions involving collective land and assets, with a transaction volume of 115.8662 million yuan.
Another strategy is to strengthen village-level companies. By issuing guidance on strengthening party building to support and expand village-level collective economies, the city encourages diversified production and operation by these companies. Dujiangyan has established 27 such companies with a total registered capital of 49.73 million yuan. With their support, in 2024, the 130 village-level rural collective economies achieved a revenue of 72.8591 million yuan, including 28.5275 million yuan in operational revenue (a year-on-year increase of 17.66%), completely eliminating "economically weak villages." Distributable income to members reached 24.1169 million yuan, a 72.43% increase year-on-year.
Ensuring oversight to prevent issues with the "family assets." Post-transition, the requirements for standardized collective asset management are higher. Greater effort is needed to clarify responsibilities and eliminate oversight blind spots, whether in managing financial revenues and expenditures according to the principle of separating administrative and economic functions or in establishing mechanisms like supervisory boards.
Current work primarily focuses on two aspects. First, strengthening institutional development. Eight normative guidance documents have been issued, covering key areas such as asset management and disposal, contract management, and major decision-making, effectively addressing hot-button issues like farmer status identification.
Second, improving multi-department collaborative oversight mechanisms. The agriculture department is responsible for identifying and providing normative guidance for the "three assets"; the finance department implements an accounting agency system for financial guidance under the principle of "village finances managed by township"; planning and natural resources departments handle asset definition and property rights registration; and disciplinary inspection and supervision authorities investigate cases involving violations of "three assets" management regulations. This further clarifies responsibilities and achieves a closed-loop supervision system through a tiered accountability mechanism.
Problems: Several "Hurdles" Impeding Progress Based on a thorough understanding of policy changes and feedback from grassroots cadres, the joint research team identified common issues and underlying reasons currently constraining the quality and efficiency of collective asset management.
"Old accounts" are hard to settle, and new property disputes continue to emerge. Despite significant efforts using manual checks and technological means for verification, some collective assets are too old, with lost documentation, changed personnel, and adjusted policies, making it difficult to completely resolve property disputes.
Some property rights are unclear. The formation process of certain collective assets is complex, and a lack of necessary archival evidence makes it hard to identify the rightful owners for precise definition.
In some cases, land and building ownership are separated. Communities possess assets like former village office buildings, schools, clinics, day care centers, and unallocated resettlement housing, but a common issue is the separation where "the land belongs to the community, but the structures belong to relevant industry authorities."
There are also difficulties in rights confirmation and registration. Affected by the above problems, some collective property rights remain disputed and unregistered. For example, among the 757 properties and land resources cleared as "account-book consistent" in 2024, only 46 obtained real estate registration certificates, accounting for 6%.
When it comes to land acquisition, demolition, or property transactions, ambiguous ownership not only easily triggers disputes between collectives and members but also hampers subsequent resource revitalization, leading to a significant deviation between actual and market value, often resulting in undervaluation.
Obstacles in the transaction process: high costs and pricing difficulties. In recent years, awareness of using the Chengdu Rural Property Exchange platform for transactions among grassroots communities and group economic organizations in Dujiangyan has significantly increased, with substantial growth in the number and value of transactions, playing a positive role in revitalizing assets. However, practical shortcomings exist.
On one hand, transaction costs are relatively high. According to transaction requirements, listing rural collective assets on the market requires meeting preconditions such as clear property rights, recognized value, and compliance with planning, involving tasks like defining ownership relations and assessing market value. Preparing these materials demands professional knowledge and experience. Many grassroots community cadres report that due to limited capabilities, they often need to purchase external social services. For a 100,000 yuan project, after deducting service procurement fees, platform fees, taxes, and other secondary costs, only about 80,000 yuan may remain for project implementation. The smaller the project amount, the greater the practical impact.
On the other hand, the pricing mechanism increases sunk costs. Compared to previous offline, small-scale negotiations, introducing multiple competitors nationwide online and using market mechanisms for property transactions helps increase transaction prices and preserve or increase asset value. However, this "highest bidder wins" logic can burden existing leaseholders. For instance, if a leaseholder invested heavily in operations during the previous contract period, they face new potential competitors in subsequent bidding. Failing to increase their bid may lead to losing the contract, rendering prior investments obsolete, while increasing the bid adds to operational burdens and affects profitability.
Cadres face "three difficulties": insufficient capability, lack of motivation, and susceptibility to misconduct. The transition is not only a change in management system but also a shift in mindset, placing higher demands on grassroots cadres. Based on actual observations, some issues persist in their performance.
Some cadres lack adequate capability. The shift from traditional, management-oriented rural governance to modern, service-oriented communities requires changes in how and where cadres focus their efforts. For example, in the early stages of transition, public services like elderly care and education may lag, and some landless farmers face difficulties in transitioning, raising concerns about their future survival and development. This requires grassroots cadres to enhance conflict resolution skills and improve public service provision. Without changing habitual thinking and strengthening policy learning, it is hard to keep up with evolving circumstances.
Some cadres lack sufficient motivation. After the transition, community committees are stripped of the function to manage collective assets. According to the survey, most areas in Dujiangyan basically adopt the approach of "combining groups but not assets," with management still handled by the original collective economic cooperatives, with specific duties assigned to the group level. The monthly subsidy for serving as a village (community) group leader is only 771 yuan, with no subsidy if not holding the position. With increased job demands and limited compensation, grassroots cadres show weak initiative and sense of responsibility in managing collective economic assets.
Some grassroots cadres also report that after the transition, favorable policies targeting rural areas, such as rural revitalization funds, have been canceled. Upon becoming urban communities, due to having fewer collective assets and weaker self-sustaining capabilities, maintaining operations relies mainly on the annual community public service operation and maintenance fund of over 200,000 yuan. However, the use of these funds is highly restricted, limited to purposes like atmosphere creation. Urgent livelihood matters such as road maintenance require coordination with industry departments, actually increasing financial pressure on the community.
Furthermore, disciplinary violations and illegal acts still occur. From cases investigated by Dujiangyan's disciplinary inspection and supervision authorities in recent years involving the "three assets," issues such as arbitrary disposal, embezzlement, and favoritism by individual village (community) group leaders are prone to occur. These manifest as "private appropriation of public land" in ownership determination, unauthorized disposal in asset management, and undertaking private work in service provision, leading to "off-the-books circulation and leakage" in group collective asset management.
Unclear Subject Status: Lack of Cohesive Synergy Currently, the legal status of rural collective economic organizations after the transition is not entirely clear, placing them in a dilemma of being "neither urban nor rural" or "both urban and rural."
Foremost is the unclear legal status. The Law of the People's Republic of China on Rural Collective Economic Organizations defines the rights and responsibilities of such organizations, but it does not reasonably incorporate post-transition rural collective economic organizations into its legislative framework. This leaves them in a legally ambiguous position, unable to fully apply the said law while having no urban collective economic organization laws to follow.
In terms of collaborative oversight, synergy is far from sufficient. Due to the long-term influence of the urban-rural dual structure, departmental functions are typically set to manage either urban or rural areas. Faced with new phenomena emerging from urbanization and integrated development that transcend or blur this duality, there is a lack of management philosophy and institutional innovation for integrated urban-rural development, and effective collaborative oversight has yet to be formed.
Grassroots supervision also remains relatively weak. Currently, the distribution of collective assets shows a pattern of being weaker at the community level and stronger at the group level. Communities themselves directly control relatively few collective assets, with most still concentrated at the group level. The majority of the city's 2,124 group economic organizations have not undergone legal entity registration, nor have they established effective boards of directors and supervisors or hired dedicated (or part-time) accounting personnel. Inadequate internal governance structures and systems, coupled with insufficient implementation of democratic decision-making and supervision mechanisms, lead to untimely detection and weak oversight of potential problems, leaving room for improvement in supervision quality and effectiveness.