The Transformation of Farmland Rights Transactions from the Song Dynasty to the Qing Dynasty: A Study Centering on the Nature and Rights of Dian Farmland

As farmland rights transactions developed, transaction rules or practices recognized by the counterparties spontaneously emerged within the market, regulated by state laws. Both the development and maturation of these rules of land rights transactions and people’s understanding of them have undergone a long process. Take the example of dian transactions (conditional sales). In the Song Dynasty, the rule that “the dian transaction requires [the landowner] leaving the property” (dianxu liye) in fact clarified the origin of “dian,” but its derived rights and interests and their diverse manifestations have given rise to ambiguities in the later dynasties. For instance, in the Song, it was not recognized by the government for the dian buyers to lease the land to the dian sellers; however, in the Qing, this form was widely accepted and thus created the illusion of an apparent “balancing of rent and interest” (zuxi xiangdi). In fact, the dian buyers deciding to operate or invest the income of the dian land, or to realize the future income, according to their own preferences and needs, was a manifestation of a shared land rights pattern constructed by the three parties: the landowner, the dian buyer, and the tenant farmer through market transactions.