【正文】 ersome. Many peasants were unable to bear the burden of the new levies and as a result, they had no alternative but to transfer or abandon their farmland and search for jobs in urban areas. The abandoned land was transferred under the stewardship of village collectives or mittees. This was a prevalent phenomenon during the period from the 1990s until 2021, the year in which the agricultural tax was repealed. The third stage began in 2021. After abolishing the agricultural tax in 2021, the state no longer levied fees on peasants and instead offered them various subsidies. Farming gradually became lucrative and the onceabandoned land suddenly became soughtafter. In addition, there were dramatic changes in the mode and state of land transfer. On one hand, peasants were less willing to transfer land, and the proportion of land transferred was in decline. On the other hand, some peasant households had to transfer their land because its size was too small to be profitable. In the face of different situations, peasants transferred their land in one of the three modes: 1. Active longterm land transfer Active longterm land transfer is when peasants choose to abandon contracted land in their home villages after settling down in urban areas, or actively seek to transfer the contracted land because they expect to settle down in urban areas. This form of land transfer existed from the 1980s onward and after the agricultural tax was repealed. Among the 60 villagers who transferred a large area of land in Caozhengong village, Jingshan county, 13 farmers transferred their land under this method. Six of the 13 farmers went to cities without their spouses or became nonfarmers (private school teachers or temporary workers turned into fulltime workers). The six villagers transferred their land in a foolproof way, and they now are living a decent life. The other seven villagers abandoned their land due to an optimistic judgment in their ability to work and live in urban areas. Six of those seven villagers are making a living in urban areas, and one of them returned to the countryside and bought a house and a plot of land in a village in an adjacent township. Among the six villagers settling down in urban areas, four villagers live an affluent life and two villagers are neither rich nor poor. Of the latter two villagers, one has bought a house with a tile roof in a town 3 and makes a living by selling bean curd。 those who promptly returned home and asked for land are also forced to relinquish a large proportion of land for a long period of time (2 mu of land per person or 10 mu per household in Jingshan county). Among the 60 households in Gongcun village that transferred their land, 47 households fall under this category. Now 24 of the 47 households have bee “l(fā)andless peasants” in nonsuburban areas and three have bee permanently “l(fā)andless peasants” because they sold their house and land together to nonnative immigrants, thus losing eligibility for confirmation of land rights. The other 23 households have received 2 mu of subsistence land. By contrast, the peasants who acquired land through land transfer are unexpectedly entitled to longterm land contracting rights due to policy and circumstance change. 3. Shortterm land transfer This is a prevalent land transfer method adopted by peasant households due to their expectation on longterm land possession and a sense of insecurity for other methods of making a living. In the rural areas of Jingshan, shortterm land transfer is currently adopted by most peasant households that acquired 2 mu of subsistence land through the confirmation of land rights in 2021. In Production Team 1 of Gongcun village, there are 18 peasant households with contracted land at the present time: Only 10 households till the land at home, while the other eight households have only 2 mu of farmland each. These families transferred their land for a short period of time and moved elsewhere to find employment. In Production Team 3 of the village, there are 25 peasant households, of which 12 households moved their families elsewhere. Now five of the 12 households have transferred their subsistence land under the shortterm scheme, but the other seven households are without any subsistence land. Most of the peasant households that moved elsewhere had left their home villages before the agricultural tax was repealed and transferred land in a passive way. Now a large proportion of them have stronger demand for land and choose not to transfer it for a long period of time because they are likely to return home to the land in the future. By contrast, the peasants who acquired land through shortterm land transfer are thus entitled to shortterm land contracting rights. II. Land tenure status and peasant stratification The foregoing analysis has revealed the existence of a number of different land transfer methods. This phenomenon is related to the policies concerning agriculture, rural areas and farmers in 5 different periods, and to the different conditions of peasants in different periods. In different periods and circumstances, peasants have adopted different land transfer methods. At present, land transfer has a significant impact on the wellbeing of peasants. In Jingshan, the villages are under greater exposure or openness. Some leave home from time to time as a result of urbanization. Nonnative villagers can settle down in the villages by acquiring land through land transfer. In this article, we will also analyze the stratification of the peasantry at the village level based on the detailed data about the economic and employment conditions of registered permanent residents in three villages. Roughly Jingshan peasants can be aggregated into five strata: migrant businessman stratum, peasant worker stratum, parttime peasant worker stratum, migrant family