Forest Rights Reformation and Rural Revitalization: A Reflection on 40 Years of Collective Forest Rights Reformation

Collective forest rights reformation in China has been going on for about 30 years. The re-engineering of forest rights with the core of "sub-forest home" did not achieve the envisaged goal of "increasing farmers' income", but led to the unintended consequence of losing the "cultivators, forests", even led to the mass of group events. Fundamentally, this dilemma had a direct correlation with "forestry capitalization" and "social exclusion effect" brought by neo-liberal "property privatization", which was implemented by forest rights reformation. As an important part of the rural revitalization strategy, the reformation of collective forest rights system is related to farmers' production and income, social stability and ecological protection in the rural areas. So, before the further reform, it is necessary to make a deep reflection on the 40 years of forest rights reformation, determine the reasonable objectives of the reformation and improve the policy to serve the strategic interests of rural revitalization.