ABSTRACT
A trust is an effective form of practicing common ownership as it conforms to the rules of a socialist market economy. It achieves a socialization of personal property and diversification of property rights, while ensuring clear rights among the unity of free individuals and shared interests. It holds onto merits and gets rid of drawbacks of traditional public ownership. A “common-ownership trust” is a property rights system of richer content, less restricted in form and more inclusive of goals. Based on common governance, sharing and joint possession, a “common-ownership trust” takes trust as its basis and entrustment as its means. Taking the separation of three rights as a principle, it gives consideration to both individual possession and joint possession of productive forces and the means of production. It stresses fairness and efficiency and combines socialism and a market economy in an ideal way. Thus, to explore effective solutions for rural land circulation, we study the history of trusts to re-add the functions of land management and land exploitation to trusts and let “common-ownership trusts” play to its institutional advantage.
