China’s peasants miss the land rush.

XIAOXIHE, China — Every year, the message is the same: the government will fix China’s left-behind countryside through reforms. This year was no different, with measures meant to help farmers move to cities and invest in improving their land.

But every year, the gap between village and city remains stubbornly wide. Many blame this on the fact that farmers are not allowed to own land.

In Xiaoxihe, a rolling eastern Chinese region, farmers speak of land ownership as something so improbable that it defies imagination.

“Ownership is not possible in China,” one farmer, 69, said. “Socialism doesn’t allow that.”

When the People’s Republic was established 70 years ago, leaders promised to transform farmers’ lives, redistributing land from rich to poor farmers.

But soon, land was nationalized, and every piece of land in China remains in state hands.

This issue has become particularly important as the government tries to prop up an economy that last year saw its slowest growth in 28 years. Rural China is still where nearly half of the country’s 1.4 billion people live and is often seen as an engine for potential growth.

China’s leader, Xi Jinping, has underlined the importance of fixing problems in rural areas. In a speech this year, he said, “if the countryside flourishes, the country flourishes.”

The Xiaoxihe region was once at the center of a daring experiment that helped turn around the country’s fortunes.

Forty years ago, farmers on the verge of starvation decided to ignore rules that required them to work in state-controlled collectives. They revived family farms. The result was a boom in agricultural production, setting off overhauls that remade China into a fast-growing economy.

But those reforms failed to reverse policies that had nationalized ownership of land.

Lack of ownership means farmers cannot buy, sell or rent plots to create economically viable larger tracts, or use the land as collateral for loans, limiting their ability to raise capital.

The result has been stagnation. In 2018, urban incomes were nearly three times higher than those of rural residents.

The government recognizes the problem. Every January, the government makes the first document that it issues a new rural policy.

About a decade ago, the state began allowing farmers to lease their land-use rights to other farmers. That freed up some to live in the city without forfeiting their landuse rights.

This system was meant to resemble a property market. But only 37 percent of rural land in China has been transferred to other farmers or companies.

One problem is that the government

With the economy slowing, Beijing looks to rural areas.

decides who can transfer land. Reforms scheduled to take effect next year could give farmers the right to vote for land transfers, but the government can still veto transfers.

Even when transfers are allowed, the system does not give the new holders crucial rights allowing them to take advantage of their larger scale.

One of the biggest farmers in the region is Zhu Chanyue, 40, who spent 20 years in China’s prosperous coastal region, investing in real estate.

In 2017, Ms. Zhu returned home to be closer to her family and try her hand at agriculture. Using the land-transfer system, she amassed nearly 200 hectares of cropland — but has not been making money.

“There’s no point boasting,” she said. “I made a lot of money in real estate but lost it all in agriculture.”