Purpose - Based on the brief historical review, this paper expounds the target and bottom line for the farmland institutional reform of in China, analyzes the Chinese scenes and historical heritage of farmland institutional arrangement, evaluates the policies and their effects over the last four decades and outlines the keynotes and possible direction of the future reform. Design/methodology/approach - Build the analytical clue of institutional target - institutional heritage - policy effort - realistic dilemma future direction and review and forecast the Chinese farmland institutional reform. Findings - The farmland institutional is an important issue with Chinese characteristics. Over the last four decades, the farmland institutional reform in China has focused on stabilizing the land property rights and promote the farmland transfer . As the study indicates, the promotion of farmland transfer has not effectively improved the scale economy of agriculture and stabilizing land property rights by titling may restrain the development of farmland transfer market, because farmland transfer is of special market logic. Originality/value - It depends on the revitalization of farmland management rights to resolve the transaction constraint of personal property and its endowment effect in farmland transfer. And classifying the land management property to involve farmers into the economy of division can be reference for the reform of traditional agriculture worldwide. Acknowledgement : This paper is sponsored by the key project of National Natural Science Foundation of China: Research on Rural Land and Relevant Element Market Cultivation and Reform (Grant No. 71333004) and by the key policy research project of National Natural Science Foundation of China: Farmland Titling: Realistic Background, Policy Objective and Effect Evaluation (Grant No. 71742003).