Research on Attention Allocation of Land Policy System Reform: A Comparative Analysis Based on Central No. 1 Documents of China

Abstract

Dealing with relationships on farmland is one of the most important issues in China. Since its reform and opening up, the policies of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China (CPC) on “agriculture, rural areas, and farmers” have been embodied in the Central No. 1 document. The documents, which represent the purpose of China, reveal the strategic direction and development ideas of the state. Based on Central No. 1 documents published by the Central Committee of the CPC, and using the attention theory from psychology, we proposed PAI and PAD indicators to express the Central Committee of the CPC’s concern and direction on agriculture, and then measured the change in attention allocation of the Central Committee of the CPC’s land policy, as well as what is “new” in the land policy system. Results showed that: First, the attention allocation of the Central Committee of the CPC’s land policy (PAI) shows a wave-like upward trend from 3.9% to 5%, and has gone through the stage of contracting management to benefit people’s livelihoods and liberate productivity, the stage of allocating land resource elements under scientific use control, and the stage of expanding power and enabling capacity to promote the modernization of land management. Second, the policy attention direction (PAD) has experienced a process from the early focus on the release of land factor productivity to the optimal allocation of land factor resources and then to the modernization of land management. Third, the scope of attention allocation is gradually expanding, especially for the construction of ecological civilization and promotion of the modernization of land management. To be specific, it is necessary to reasonably arrange the overall planning of China’s land policy system based on the actual situation, and to clarify and optimize the development direction and the proportion of attention allocation in its subdivision fields. The intention to be the first to push forward the implementation of the relevant policies and pilot issues of land governance modernization will become the new trend of the future research. Based on the actual situation, we should continue to emancipate prevailing perceptions and combine the focus of rural land reform to inject vitality into rural development and into the development of the whole economy and society.

1. Introduction

“Agriculture and rural issues are fundamental to the country’s economy and people’s livelihood, and solving these issues must always be the top priority in the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China (CPC)’s work [1]”. As Chinese socialism has entered a new era, China now finds itself at a new development stage. The principal challenge facing Chinese society is the gap between unbalanced and inadequate development and the people’s growing expectations for a better life. Among these, agricultural and rural issues are the main problems, and the rural land issue has become a weak point hindering the development of the whole society [2]. As a result, the Central Committee of the CPC continues to attach great importance to the work in rural areas, focusing on the contradictions under different stages, and putting forward scientific management solutions to achieve good practical results.

Since its reform and opening up, under the guidance of the “Three Rural” policy, the country’s rural work progress has made remarkable achievements [3]. At different stages of development, the Central Committee of the CPC has issued land policies with different emphases based on realistic contradictions, and academic circles have also produced certain research on the land policy of the “No. 1 Document of the Central Committee of the CPC” over the years. The research can be mainly divided into macro research and micro research.

The macro research mainly includes the dynamic institutional change and the land policies in different historical stages since the founding of the Central Committee of the CPC. Firstly, according to mainstream research, the theme and content of the “No. 1 Document of the Central Committee of the CPC” have become the direction of China’s “Three Rural” policy since entering the 21st century [4]. Secondly, dynamic institutional change is a continuous dynamic process, which constructs the framework of “central-local-individual” co-occurrence, which jointly determines the diversity and unity of optional policies [5]. Thirdly, some research proposed that China’s agricultural land system has experienced a trajectory of change from peasant monopoly, to collective monopoly, to separation of two rights, and then to fission between two rights [6]. The overall change of land policy can be divided into three stages. The first stage is to achieve a new form of cooperation through the two-tier responsibility system of unification and division, whereby the land policy pays more attention to the liberation of productive forces. The second stage of land policy is to focus on the rational allocation of land resources in a science-oriented manner [7]. The third stage of the land policy is committed to the goal of modernizing land governance [8].

In addition to the above analysis of macro research, the micro research of the Central Committee of the CPC’s land policy mainly analyzes the specific policy, and focuses on two aspects. The first aspect is a detailed study of a certain groundbreaking and representative policies, and the focus of these policies is generally on the institutional change and its historical role [9]. The second aspect is the interpretation of the new policy, which is mainly reflected in the performance, reasons, requirements, and significance of what is considered “new”, wherein the objective interpretation can promote better understanding and better implementation of the new agricultural policy [10].

From 1982 to 2022, the Central Committee of the CPC and the State Council published 24 files of the Central No. 1 document, which contain a large number and wide span of rich content. However, there are many macro and micro research on the land policy of the “No. 1 Document of the Central Committee of the CPC”, but there is no detailed and systematic study on the direction and intensity of policy concern. Posner I’s Research on attention as a model for the integration of psychological science explains the organization and prediction behavior of scholars based on the attention allocation of decision makers [11]. In learning from the theory of attention allocation, we expand the research perspective and provide theoretical support for improving China’s rural land governance.

As the most important embodiment of the Central Committee of the CPC’s agricultural policy ideas has taken shape after the reform and opening up, the defense of the description of land policy can help to deeply explore the change processes and driving forces behind rural land policy, so as to form targeted reform ideas and provide suggestions for the modernization of land governance. Therefore, to generate a clearer understanding of the changes in the Central Committee of the CPC’s attention to land policy in the past 24 years, the authors took the No. 1 documents of Central Committee of the CPC as samples, selected land policy as the research topic, and applied the basic theory of attention to analyze the allocation intensity, orientation, and breadth of the central government’s attention to its land policy system. By measuring the attention allocation of the central government’s land policy system, we not only can objectively describe the evolution of the Central Committee of the CPC’s land policy focus, but can also illustrate the practical significance that grasps the trend of China’s latest land policy and promotes the modernization of land governance.

2. Materials and Methods

2.1. Materials

This paper takes the files of the No. 1 document of the Central Committee of the CPC as the research text. The No. 1 document is published by the Central Committee of the CPC, and refers to the first document issued every year in China [12]. At different stages of development, the Central Committee of the CPC issued land policies with different emphases based on practical contradictions. To study the Central Committee of the CPC’s thinking on the road of agricultural development, we constructed a sample database of the No. 1 document of the Central Committee of the CPC for agricultural. Its formulation and implementation reflect the Central Committee of the CPC’s thinking on the path and strategy of agricultural development, and also highlight the innovative spirit of the leadership of the Central Committee of the CPC for farmers in promoting agricultural development. We built a database of the No. 1 document of the Central Committee of the CPC through three steps. The first step was to extract all the sentences or paragraphs focusing on keywords such as “land”, “rural” and “agriculture”. The second step was to manually approve the high-frequency words, and delete the words that appeared repeatedly but were not related to the above keywords. The third step was to rearrange the high-frequency words to generate the final list, and finally build a relevant database.

2.2. Basic Idea and Hypothesis

The theoretical basis of this paper is the basic theory of attention in the field of management research [13,14,15]. This means that, under the hypothesis of bounded rationality, managers should scientifically allocate their limited attention to make correct decisions, and any decisions made by managers depend on where their attention is focused. The basic view of attention includes three parts: attention focus, attention situation, and attention configuration [16]. Attention focus means that decisions are made depending on where the decision maker’s attention is focused; Attention situation refers to the decision made depending on the environment and time background of the decision maker [17,18]. Attention allocation refers to the decision made depending on the decision maker’s allocation of attention, which mainly includes three dimensions: attention direction, attention intensity, and attention span [19,20]. Attention direction refers to “the direction or even the problem that the decision maker pays attention to”; attention intensity refers to “the amount of attention the decision maker pays to a certain policy issue”; and attention span refers to “the size of the attention scope of the decision maker”.

2.3. Methods

First, by measuring the weight keywords in the No. 1 document of the Central Committee of the CPC, we got the change of attention configuration intensity [21]. On this basis, text quantitative analysis was carried out, which was divided into three directions according to the intensity, and each direction corresponded to one stage.

The specific operations were as follows: The first step, according to the sample database after information retrieval, was to set the word segmentation table and use ROST CM software to extract high-frequency words. In the second step, the auto-generated keyword table was screened, and the real words were selected to establish the high-frequency word bank at different stages. The third step was to construct a three-stage discourse matrix, import the discourse matrix into SPSS, and use the Ward clustering method to process high-frequency keywords. The fourth step was to import the word segmentation into ROST CM for clustering again, in order to verify the effectiveness of Ward clustering.

2.3.1. Policy Attention Intensity (PAI)

Here is the proportion of the keyword text to the full text to measure the intensity of the government’s attention allocation:

$$PAI=\frac{KC}{FWC}$$

(1)

where, the PAI is Policy Attention intensity (0–1); KC is the keyword count; and FWC is the full word count.

2.3.2. Policy Attention Direction (PAD)

Policy Attention Direction (PAD) refers to “the direction or even the problem that decision makers pay attention to”. There are three steps to express PAD:

• Extract high-frequency words

The first step is to set up a word segmentation table based on the sample base after information retrieval, and use ROST CM software to extract high-frequency words. Then filter and select solid words to establish high-frequency word libraries at different stages. The word cloud is made based on the high-frequency words (Figure 1).

2.

Use the Ward clustering method to process high-frequency keywords

Ward clustering is a clustering method [22]. Cluster analysis is based on the similarity of the data characteristics of the classified samples, according to certain rules, to divide the samples into several classes, so that the samples in the same class have a high degree of similarity, and the samples of different kinds are highly different.

The Ward clustering method refers to a clustering method that uses the difference sum of squares method to calculate distance [23]. Assuming that the class G_a and G_b cluster form a new class G_m, the sum of squares of the in-class dispersion of the sum G_a and the sum G_b are respectively Formulas (2) and (3) [24,25,26].

$$W_a={\displaystyle \sum X_i}\in G_a(X_i-\overline{X_a}{)}^{\prime }(X_i-\overline{X_a})$$

(2)

$$W_b={\displaystyle \sum X_i}\in G_b(X_i-\overline{X_b}{)}^{\prime }(X_i-\overline{X_b})$$

(3)

$$W_m={\displaystyle \sum X_i}\in G_m(X_i-\overline{X_m}{)}^{\prime }(X_i-\overline{X_m})$$

(4)

When G_a and G_b merge, a new class G_m is formed where W_m > W_a + W_b, that is, the sum of squares of the intraclass dispersion increases. If the distance between G_a and G_b is close, the value of the increase in the sum of squares of the dispersion should be smaller. Therefore, the squared distance between G_a and G_b from the equation is calculated according to Equation (5).

$$D_{ab}^2=W_m-\left(W_a+W_b\right)$$

(5)

Therefore, the method of variance sum of squares is to apply the idea to the classification, so that the dispersion square in the same class is small, which indicates that the similarity between samples is high; if the difference between the species is large, the degree of similarity between the samples is low. The size of the sum of squares of the dispersion measures the similarity between samples, which meets the requirements of clustering [27,28].

3. Results

3.1. The PAI of the Central Committee of the CPC’s Allocation to Land Policy

By measuring the proportion of relevant words in 24 files of the Central No. 1 document to the total number of words in the document, the attention intensity ratio and its intensity trend line chart were obtained, as shown in Figure 2.

The Figure 1 shows that the PAI of the Central Committee of the CPC’s allocation to land policy shows a wave-like upward trend. According to the trend of the curve, the results can be divided into three stages for analysis, namely, the first stage (1982–1986), the second stage (2004–2012), and the third stage (2013–2022). As can be seen from the graph, the intensity of the Central Committee of the CPC’s attention allocation to land policy shows a wave-like upward trend on the whole, from 3.9% to 5%, which reflects that the central government’s attention to rural land policy is also increasing year by year. Among the 24 files of the Central No. 1 document, the proportion of the key documents in the other years gradually tended to be stable in their fluctuation, with the proportion maintained at 2–7%. The PAI of the first stage (1982–1986) decreased by 0.8%, from 3.9% to 3.1%. The PAI of the second stage (2004–2012) increased by 1% from 5.8% to 6.8%, and the PAI of the third stage (2013–2022) decreased by 1.5%, from 6.8% to 5%.

The reasons for the evolution of policy attention are as follows. In the first stage, the household contract system was creatively proposed, and the Central Committee of the CPC’s attention to land policy continued to increase. After the implementation of this system, it was widely promoted and applied in the country. In the following years, with the support of this policy, the contradictions of land policy were basically alleviated, so the Central Committee of the CPC’s allocation of attention focused on other things, and then attention to the land relatively declined. In the second phase, there was already a gap of 14 years compared to the first phase. In the past 14 years, there have been many contradictions in land governance, and these contradictions needed to be resolved one by one at this stage, so the Central Committee of the CPC’s attention to the distribution of the land system was on the rise. In the third stage, according to the background of agricultural policy under the new situation, the Central Committee of the CPC proposed the policy of the separation of three powers in 2014, forming ownership, contracting rights and management rights, which greatly standardized the land property rights system, promoted land circulation, and alleviated the contradictions in land governance at that time. In 2014, the intensity of the Central Committee of the CPC’s attention allocation to land policy increased, but then when the system was finalized and applied, the allocated attention decreased, and the government allocated its attention to other things in agriculture.

We imported the subject word frequency table into the ROST CM software to get the proportional weight of the cluster analysis (Figure 3).

By summarizing the evolution of land policies in 24 files of the Central No. 1 documents over the past years and combining the characteristics of the PAI, the changes in the Central Committee of the CPC’s attention since the 1980s can be divided into three stages: the contracting management stage of benefiting people’s livelihoods and liberating productive forces (the first stage), the optimization of the allocation of land resources elements through scientific use control (the second stage), and the promotion of the modernization of land management by expanding power and enabling capacity (the third stage). The three stages all took “agriculture, rural areas, and farmers” as the fundamental starting point. Different stages focused on different land systems, but they all aimed at realizing the rural revitalization and modernization of land management.

3.1.1. The First Stage (1982–1986): Liberate Land Factor Productivity as the Key

During this stage, the proportion of characters in this stage showed a declining trend, with the highest value of 3.9% in 1982 and the lowest value of 3.1% in 1986, which was relatively stable on the whole, and indicated that attention intensity began to deepen at this stage. Since reform and opening up, the Central Committee of the CPC proposed to implement the household contract responsibility system, which was the reform of the rural land property rights system. The Central Committee of the CPC began to pay more attention to agricultural land policies.

The 5 files of the Central No. 1 documents affirmed the correctness of the rural reform policy and pointed out that the household contract responsibility system fully released farmers’ enthusiasm for production and greatly improved their living standards. Agricultural land policy changes under the leadership of the Communist Party of China revolved around land ownership and use rights. The household contract responsibility system separated ownership and use rights during the stage of land contract management, and market factor productivity was released to a great extent, which brought fundamental changes to China’s economic development. See

Table A1. Summary of rural land policies in the Central No. 1 document from 1982 to 1986.

Year	The Main Context
1982	Recognize the legality of exclusive production to households Reasonable and compliant production responsibility system No sale of contracted land
1983	Stabilize and improve the responsibility system for agricultural production Handle the relationship between “unification” and “division” well through contracting
1984	Extend the land contract period and implement intensive management The commune member can ask for an object subcontract after collective consent Self-reserved land and contract land are not permitted to buy and sell
1985	The system of contract responsibility for production and household management will remain unchanged for a long time
1986	The family contract is the party’s long-term policy, and can not be changed at will Do a good job in the production of vegetables in the suburbs of big cities to ensure the supply

in Appendix A for details.

3.1.2. The Second Stage (2004–2012): Allocation Stage of Land Resources under Scientific Use

Following the continuous advancement of reform and opening up, the dividend of rural land resources was released. However, the government’s attention allocation tended to release the land factor productivity, and on the contrary, it paid less attention to the allocation of land resources, so the problem of the land policy management system gradually emerged. At this stage, the key point of land reform was to establish a scientific land management system and land resource allocation system with efficient use as the core. At this stage, the Central Committee of the CPC ensured the rights and interests of farmers by broadening the scope of land policy reform, by implementing the strictest farmland protection system, by implementing responsibilities at every level, and by resolutely guarding the red line of 1.8 billion square meters of farmland, thus ensuring food security. See

Table A2. Summary of rural land policies in the No. 1 Central document from 2004 to 2012.

Year	The Main Context
2004	Accelerate the reform of the land expropriation system Actively explore the ways and methods to market the collective non-agricultural construction land
2005	Transfer of contracted land Develop appropriate scale management Respect and protect farmers’ land contract rights and management autonomy
2006	Stabilize and improve the two-tier management system Accelerate the reform of the land requisition system
2007	Adhere to the basic rural management system Stabilize the land contract relationship
2008	Stabilize and improve the dual management system Establish a registration system for contracted land management rights Accelerate reform of the land requisition system No land contracted by peasant households shall be adjusted or recovered during the period of the land contract
2009	Prohibit Illegal collection of land contracted by farmers Do a good job of determining, registering, and certificating collective land ownership The transfer of land contract rights shall not alter the nature of collective ownership, alter its use, or harm farmers’ land contract rights and interests.
2010	Ensure steady development of land contract relations
2011	Put water conservancy work in a more prominent position in the development of the party and state undertakings, work hard to accelerate the construction of farmland water conservancy, and promote the leapfrog development of water conservancy.
2012	Implement the policy of maintaining stable and permanent land contract relations Accelerate cadastral surveys in rural areas, and complete the confirmation, registration, and certification of ownership of all types of rural collective land by 2012

in Appendix A for details.

3.1.3. The Third Stage (2013–2022): Expansion of Power and Empowerment to Promote Modernization of Land Governance

In this stage, the attention intensity of the Central Committee of the CPC’s land policy presented an increasing trend year by year, and tended to be more stable compared to before. Since the eighteenth congress, the Central Committee of the CPC has adhered to the people as the center of the development of ideas, and continues to promote the reform of land management, which opened a new chapter in modern land management and gradually improved land management efficiency. See

Table A3. Main contents of rural land policies in the Central No. 1 document from 2013 to 2022.

Year	The Main Context
2013	Study the concrete ways to ensure that the existing land contract relationship remains stable and unchanged for a long time, and complete the confirmation, registration, and certification of contracted rural land management rights within five years Reform and improve the rural housing land system, strengthen management, protect rural households’ right to use their housing land by the law, and strictly regulate the transfer of collective land for commercial construction purposes
2014	Stabilize rural land contracts and keep them unchanged for a long time to come Allow contracted land to be mortgaged to financial institutions for financing Rural collective-owned construction land for business purposes shall be allowed to be sold, leased, and bought into the market as state-owned land at the same price with the same weight Improve the rural housing land system and improve the 11 policies for allocating rural housing land
2015	Accurately to the door, strictly control the right to accurately control the scope of the stock Protect the rights and interests of rural households on their homestead by the law, explore a new mechanism for guaranteeing house for rural residents, promptly amend the law on farmland contract, and define the power relationship between the “three rights” on rural land
2016	Make clear the specific provisions on permanent land contract relations Encourage and guide farmers to swap resources for contracted land to achieve contiguously cultivated land Accelerate the determination, registration, and certification of the right to use rural collective construction land and residential land, and improve the ways to protect and obtain the rights and interests of rural residential land.
2017	Carry out trials to reform the system of expropriating farmland, selling collective-owned construction land for commercial use, and housing land in a coordinated manner Comprehensively accelerate the determination, registration, and certification of ownership of rural residential land and collective commercial construction land that integrates real estate
2018	Implement the current policy of maintaining stable and permanent land contract relations, and implement the policy of extending the extension of the second round of land contract for another 30 years after the expiration of the second round of land contract. Strictly implement land use control, and strictly prohibit the use of private rural residential land to build villas and private association hall
2019	Keep the rural land contract relationship stable Build a unified construction land market between urban and rural areas Carry out trials for the reclamation of idle residential land
2020	Stick to the red line between cultivated land and permanent basic farmland Improve the policy system for land use for rural industrial development, clarify the types of land use and the ways of land supply, and implement classified management. Land for agricultural facilities can be cultivated, strengthen supervision over land used for agricultural facilities and prohibit non-agricultural construction in the name of land used for agricultural facilities.
2021	Overall layout of ecological, agricultural, urban, and other functional Spaces, scientific delineation of various spatial control boundaries, strict implementation of land use control Strictly control the occupation of cultivated land for non-agricultural construction and resolutely prevent the conversion of cultivated land into non-agricultural and non-grain crops.
2022	Propose to comprehensively promote the key tasks of rural revitalization Strengthen the basic support of modern agriculture Focus on industries to promote rural development, and steadily promote rural construction Adhere to the party’s overall leadership over the work of “agriculture, rural areas, and farmers”.

in Appendix A for details.

3.2. The PAD of the Central Committee of the CPC’s Allocation to Land Policy

3.2.1. The PAD of the First Stage: Focus on Improving Land Factor Productivity

The focus was on liberating land factor productivity to release the vitality of market factors, and promote the improvement of productivity and the development of industrialization and urbanization, which was reflected in the implementation of household contract management by the Central Committee of the CPC.

The high-frequency keywords were clustered into six categories: market development, land ownership, contracted operation, rural land circulation, productivity, and right of autonomy (Figure 4). ROST CM clustering verified the clustering results of keywords (Figure 3). The generated category of “emancipating land factor productivity” accounted for 67.12% of the relevant words in this stage, “guaranteeing farm output to households” accounted for 18.23%, and “legally transferring land use right” accounted for 14.12%. It reflected the attention to liberating the productivity of land factors and promoting the production quota and work quota to households.

3.2.2. The PAD of the Second Stage: Focus on Optimizing the Allocation of Land Resources

With the full release of the dividend of land policy reform, China’s economy and society entered a period of rapid development. At this time, the Central Committee of the CPC focused its attention on the optimal allocation of land resources and proposed the establishment of a land management system as the core and the strictest farmland protection system. After clustering, the high-frequency keywords formed five categories: land resource allocation, agricultural farmland protection, market economy, land reform dividend, and urbanization construction (Figure 5). According to the clustering results of high-frequency words, the generated category of “land resource allocation” accounted for 43.28%, “agricultural farmland protection” accounted for 23.21%, and “market economy” accounted for 14.56% (Figure 3).

3.2.3. The PAD of the Third Stage: Focus on Comprehensively Promoting the Modernization of Land Governance

In this stage, the primary focus was on comprehensively promoting the modernization of land governance and giving intensive attention to the “three bottom lines”, the transfer of contracting rights, and the construction of an ecological civilization system (Figure 6).

The results of ROST CM clustering were as follows: among them, “modernization of land governance” accounted for 16.27% of the relevant texts at this stage, “upholding the three bottom lines and safeguarding farmers’ interests” accounted for more than 10%, “transfer of contracting rights enables agricultural modernization” accounted for 8.78%, and “building ecological civilization” accounted for 7.33% (Figure 3).

4. Discussion

4.1. The Value of Measures of the PAI and PAD of the Central Committee of the CPC

The land policy has involved specific issues, such as the liberation of productivity, allocation of land resources, separation of the three powers, and efficiency of governance. During the long period, has the Central Committee of the CPC’s focus on land policy changed, and how has it changed? The answer to this question is helpful to reveal the changing law of the Central Committee of the CPC’s attention direction in implementing land policy and promoting the development of productivity.

This study measured the intensity and orientation of the attention allocation of the Central Committee of the CPC on the land policy system, combed through the evolution and development of land policy since the 1980s, and forecasted China’s land policy attention allocation trend in the future period. There are some inadequacies in this paper, such as the lack of persuasiveness in measuring attention by word weight ratio and high-frequency words, and the discontinuity of Central No. 1 documents, but generally speaking, this paper can provide a new research angle for summarizing the evolution of China. Based on the analysis of the first document of the Central Committee of the CPC, the conclusion is that the attention of the Central Committee of the CPC to the land policy system has shown a wave-like upward trend.

What’s more, based on the theoretical research on the basic view of attention, considering the factors of reality and typicality, this paper mainly analyzed the two dimensions of attention intensity and orientation.

4.2. The Reasons for the Evolution of Policy Attention

The PAI of 1st stage (1982–1986) trend decreased because the intensity of attention allocation in these two stages decreases. In the 1st stage, there were no described land policy documents in 1984. The reason for the first stage trend was that the economic structural reform set off by the Third Plenary Session of the Eleventh Central Committee of the CPC took the rural household contract responsibility system as the breakthrough point, and its essence was the reform of rural land property rights. Based on a profound understanding of and reflection on the limitations of the traditional highly centralized agricultural collective economy, the leading group, with Comrade Deng Xiaoping at the core, decided to readjust agricultural production relations and regard the emancipation and development of productive forces as the focus of rural economic structural reform. The impact of this change showed that the Central Committee of the CPC attached great importance to the reform of the rural land property rights system, and mobilized the enthusiasm of farmers through the adjustment of the structure of agricultural land property rights.

The 2nd stage arose (2004–2012) because the intensity of attention allocation increased at this stage. The 2006 Central No. 1 document of the Central Committee of the CPC clearly put forward the need to focus on the development of the rural economy to further liberate and develop the productive forces, and to adhere to the policy of “giving more, taking less, and freeing up”; In 2008, the Central Committee of the CPC clearly increased the investment in “agriculture, rural areas, and farmers” to further effectively protect the interests of farmers, and gradually increased the need for tangible benefits to farmers. In the second stage, as we entered the 21st century with the intensification of labor mobility in China’s rural society, the original contract responsibility system characterized by the “separation of two powers” gradually produced some contradictions that were incompatible with the development of the productive forces. In this context, the phenomenon of agricultural land circulation began to appear throughout the country, and this institutional innovation gradually promoted the process of marketization of the rural land factors. Practice proved that the “separation of three powers” in rural areas conformed to the requirements of the times, protected the land rights and interests of farmers, and brought incremental benefits. At the same time, it accelerated the rational circulation of land elements, fully tapped the utilization potential of land elements, and greatly released the new momentum of rural productivity development.

The PAI of the 3rd stage (2013–2022) trend decreased because the intensity of attention allocation in this stage decreased. The No. 1 Document of the Central Committee of the CPC in 2013 clearly proposed the need to adhere to the collective ownership of rural land by farmers, and the No. 1 Document of the Central Committee of the CPC in 2016 proposed the land reform plan of “separation of three rights”, and systematically described the reform pattern of “separation of three rights”. The No. 1 document of the Central Committee of the CPC in 2020 focused on winning the battle against poverty and making up for the shortcomings of land governance in “agriculture, rural areas, and farmers”. In the third stage, in 2014, the fourth historical ownership of land property rights in New China changed, and the government proposed to adhere to the collective ownership of rural land, to stabilize the contracting rights of rural households, and to revitalize land management rights. As a result, China’s farmland rights began to creatively divide into three rights. Therefore, at the beginning of the third stage, the Central Committee of the CPC’s attention to land policy reached a relatively high level, because it was an innovative beginning, but after a few years, attention also declined. This promoted the modernization of agricultural land governance.

4.3. The Attention Direction of Land Policy in the Future

Land is not only an important factor of production, but also a spatial carrier for human activities and socio-economic development. For a long time, the land system, as an important part of the regulation of production relations, has played an important role in promoting the release of land value and productivity through the rational coordination of land occupation, domination, and use. The changes in China’s rural land system reform since its reform and opening up are divided into two main lines: the optimal allocation of land elements and labor factors, and the manifestation of land functions and values. Only by reforming the land system can we resolve the contradictions in agricultural reality in two basic ways. With the changes in the basic contradictions of society, China has entered a new historical period, which is prominently manifested in the “three peaks” of population, urbanization and industrialization, and social development is facing the “three major problems” of ensuring ecological construction, protecting cultivated land resources, and ensuring healthy and high-quality economic development. In view of the practical problems restricting agricultural and rural development at the current stage, the main directions of rural land system reform in the future have three aspects. First of all, it is necessary to strengthen land empowerment and make full use of its multiple functions. Secondly, it is necessary to improve the efficiency of land value and market-oriented allocation of land resources, so that rural areas can become places that rapidly increase natural capital. Finally, the reform of the land system should be taken as an important means to ease the relationship between urban and rural areas, to reshape the relationship between people and land, to optimize the spatial function pattern of the countryside, and make the countryside a harmonious space suitable for living and working.

4.4. Policy Suggestions

At present, China is in a stage of comprehensively promoting the modernization of farmland governance, under the circumstances that the productivity of land elements is increasingly released, that farmers’ concerns and interests are gradually implemented, and that the contradiction between people and land is gradually eliminated. Building a new land policy requires changing the concept in unprecedented ways.

First of all, the Central Committee of the CPC should reduce the fluctuation of attention in publishing land policies. They should reasonably plan the development direction of different areas in China’s land policy system, optimize the proportion of attention in various fields, continuously improve the efficiency of land governance, and empower rural revitalization. Secondly, the Central Committee of the CPC should pay attention to the social function positioning of land, which is a factor of production. It can be seen from the measurement results of the proportion of words in the Central No. 1 Documents that the new era has gradually paid attention to issues in the modernization of land governance, such as expanding power and empowerment, intensive use of land, etc., and that the government has given continuous attention to the concerns of farmers’ interests and land contracting rights. Therefore, the Central Committee of the CPC should not only pay attention to the governance of land itself, but also pay attention to the positioning of land as a social function. Thirdly, in developing China’s productive forces, it must not follow the old road of “pollution first, treatment later”, but should more effectively release the productivity of land factors and promote the modernization of land governance in multiple dimensions, such as land use, distribution, and circulation.

5. Conclusions

By combing land policy development since the 1980s in Central No. 1 documents for each year of keywords for text analysis, China’s land policy evolution was be divided into three stages. Through summing up the text analysis results, China’s attention for the future configuration direction of the land policy was forecasted, which provided feasible suggestions for the policy of land. The main conclusions are as follows: Firstly, we provided new indicators (PAI and PAD) to prospect the policy attention for summarizing the evolution of land policy in China. Secondly, the policy attention intensity (PAI) of the Central Committee of the CPC’s land policy shows a wave-like upward trend, and has gone through the stage of contracting management to benefit people’s livelihood and liberate productivity, the stage of allocating land resources elements under scientific use control, and the stage of expanding power and enabling capacity to promote the modernization of land management. Thirdly, the direction of policy attention (PAD) has experienced a process, from the early focus on the release of land factor productivity, to the optimal allocation of land factor resources, and finally to the modernization of land management. Fourthly, the scope of attention allocation is gradually expanding, especially for the construction of ecological civilization and the promotion of the modernization of land management.

At present, the international situation continues to undergo profound changes, and the reform of China has entered a critical period. Therefore, the Central Committee of the CPC’s attention to agricultural land policy needs to be continuously improved, the research scope of this field needs to be deepened, and the CPC must be committed to promoting the realization of land governance modernization. To be specific, it is necessary to reasonably arrange the overall planning of China’s land policy system based on the actual situation, to clarify and optimize the development direction, and to determine the proportion of attention allocation in its subdivision fields. Then, it is necessary to improve the efficiency of land management, and to try to achieve the modern development of land management. At present, policy belongs to the stage of promoting the modernization of land administration in an all-around way, under the situation that the productivity of land elements is increasingly being released, that the interests of farmers are gradually being implemented, and that the contradiction between people and land is gradually being eliminated. To construct new land policy, it is necessary to change the concept in unprecedented ways, and to push forward the implementation of relevant policies and pilot issues of land governance modernization that will become the new trends of the future research. We should seize the opportunity and make good use of it. Based on the actual situation, we should continue to emancipate the perspective on policy and combine the focus of rural land reform to inject vitality into rural development and into the development of the whole economy and society.