Long-Term Lease Practice of Rural Homesteads: Legal Avoidance or Institutional Innovation?

Against the background of rapid urbanization and rural population decline, the revitalization of idle rural homesteads in China faces institutional constraints arising from collective ownership, membership-based qualification rights, and restrictions on market-oriented transfer. Existing studies have mainly focused on homestead circulation and exit mechanisms, while the role of long-term leasing in stabilizing rural land use expectations remains insufficiently explored. This study examines whether long-term leasing represents institutional innovation or legal avoidance through a comparative analysis of the “Shared Village” project in Gaoling District, Xi’an, and the “Xiangyue Huating” project in Shanghai. The study indicates that the Gaoling model employs flexible contractual arrangements and village-level coordination to adapt fragmented rural resources to market demand, yet its renewal-dependent operation leads to persistent legal uncertainty. In contrast, the Shanghai model adopts a collective coordination pathway. Through platform-based development and collective participation, it enhances resource integration and investment capacity, while requiring robust institutional mechanisms to curb excessive capital involvement and guarantee equitable benefit distribution. The results show the following: (1) Long-term leasing primarily functions as a mechanism for stabilizing use-right expectations rather than transferring ownership rights. (2) Different governance pathways generate different forms of use-right stability. (3) Collective intermediary governance plays a critical role in coordinating rights, supervising land use, and balancing stakeholder interests. (4) Long-term leasing constitutes institutional innovation only when it maintains collective ownership, protects farmers’ rights, and operates within established institutional boundaries.