Dialectics of Cultivated Land Governance: The Adjustment of Policy Rigidity, Practical Tensions, and Value Rationality

The protection of cultivated land embodies both the rigidity of “the strictest requirements” in policy and adaptive strategies in governance practices. The dialectics of cultivated land governance characterized by “balancing diverse interests, resolving conflicts and contradictions, and mitigating risks” , is essentially a complex dialectical entity of order and freedom, control and liberation, instrumental rationality and value rationality. It differs significantly from the general logic of “maintaining stability” in government governance in many respects and at a fundamental level. Its emerging patterns, current states of existence, and normative postures are shaped by problem orientation, practical tensions, and historical initiative, forming the evolutionary pathway of the socialist land system with Chinese characteristics and its food security governance amid modernization. It not only adheres to the philosophical core of “land (food) as the foundation of human survival” , but also develops the practical form of “justice in abundance” , realizing the Sinicization and modernization of Marxist land theory.