Functionalism is a public law analysis perspective corresponding to normativism, which is built on the basis of demand-oriented pragmatism (Tan and Fu, 2021) compared with value-oriented normativism, which intends to examine the actual function APCL and grasp its proper value. As an overall design to meet the needs of cultivated land protection, the examination under functionalism provides an analytical path different from the test of “value legitimacy”, that is, it does not directly discuss legal norms as means, but falsifies the function of APCL at the operational level of the system (Chen, 2020) and passes the test of “demand and efficacy". This method explores how the APCL system manages its own “reproduction process” under the limitation of self-adaptation (“primary production” is the self-adaptation of the rules of APCL from the perspective of normativism). Assuming that all links in the “reproduction process” have collaborative instrumental rationality from the perspective of functionalism, administrative penalties, administrative remedies, administrative contracts and administrative public interest litigation in the APCL system can evolve into punishment needs and effects, relief needs and effects, desirable needs and effects, and public welfare needs and efficacy according to the relationship structure of “demand-efficacy”, the road map of “demand-effectiveness”actual inspection of APCL is shown in Figure 2. The traditional APCL defines the system operation link from the perspective of the administrative subject in cultivated land protection, hence its consequence is that it is generally believed that APCL is only the system of the subject, ignoring the important procedural element of the administrative counterpart of cultivated land protection (Klabbers, 2022), thus making it one-sided to focus on improving the organizational efficiency when considering the optimization of the system operation link, without fully taking into account the multiple needs of the counterpart for program optimization. It is also difficult to regulate the realistic game among the objectives, roles and behaviors of multiple subjects in cultivated land protection (Michaels, 2011). This means that when reviewing the operation links in APCL, we should pay attention to the counterpart, an important procedural subject, and highlight the important role and value of APCL system in ensuring administrative participation and public participation (Sandholtz and Stone Sweet, 2012). On this basis, from the perspective of functionalism, APCL can be divided into four links at the system operation level according to the relationship between administrative subjects and administrative counterparts in cultivated land protection: cultivated land protection administrative punishment for adjusting cultivated land administrative management relationship, cultivated land protection administrative reconsideration focusing on administrative relief relationship, administrative contract signing and fulfillment based on consensus, and the administrative public interest litigation of cultivated land protection between the procuratorate organs and the administrative organs for cultivated land protection. In addition, from the perspective of functionalism, APCL has its independent value and function whose integral value, compatibility value, and defensive value will gradually highlight. The system operation level of APCL will be reviewed, and the improvement of procedures will be included in the overall protection scope. The core function of APCL will move from protection procedures to procedural protection, from managing cultivated land to serving cultivated land, that is, its role is no longer just to regulate the system operation but to build a systematic protection concept of a diversified community of cultivated land resources. This means that the fundamental purpose of standardizing administrative procedures at the level of APCL system operation is to promote and standardize the legitimacy, fairness and efficiency of administrative acts in the field of APCL, while the direct purpose is to build a unified procedural standard, improve responsibility compensation, ecological compensation and interest adjustment through multiple means, create a positive incentive atmosphere for cultivated land protection, and finally form a farmer-centered pluralistic and co-governed cultivated land protection community with social participation and government protection. Furthermore, the procedures regulated by each link in the APCL system are the procedures for all activities, including administrative management of cultivated land protection, administrative relief and even administrative agreements, administrative public interest litigation, etc.

From the perspective of normativism, the reason why the relevant normative documents in the field of APCL are applied is not due to the obedience of the counterparty in the “central-land” relationship, the “article-block” structure and the “state-farmer” relationship, but because the relevant normative documents themselves constitute a specific value judgment basis, which makes the subject behavior in the field of APCL legal or justified (Xu, 2020). Specifically, in terms of the system structure of cultivated land administrative protection, in order to avoid forming a “closed category” of one or more protection means, administrative protection should have overall balance and internal integrity in structure, and the integrity of norms in the field of cultivated land protection provides a benchmark for the balance and integrity of the protection structure; In terms of the coverage of the protected objects, administrative protection is increasingly manifested as a multi-level process involving the joint participation and interaction of many subjects, which also puts forward higher requirements for the compatibility of norms; In terms of the tasks of administrative protection of cultivated land, although with the expansion of administrative tasks and the transformation of administrative roles, “defense against violations” is no longer the central task of administrative protection, the defensive tasks of administrative protection still play an important role in policy guidance, risk regulation and other aspects in the field of cultivated land protection. In a general sense, the generation of value determines the efficacy and demand satisfaction of the system and efficacy is the external expression of the legitimacy of the system (Zhu and Deng, 2021). And the significance of exploring the legitimacy of the value of APCL is to make the characteristics of administrative protection play a role in the field of cultivated land protection. In addition, “under a specific norm, value, belief and understanding system” is the basis for evaluating legitimacy (Guo, 2006). In the specific context of APCL, the overall value inhabits the overall protection requirements of “cross-level and cross-region”; The value of compatibility lies in the behavior of diverse subjects in specific situations While defensive value lies in the regulation of local government, the relationship between several value legitimacy of APCL is shown in Figure 3.

The main purpose of administrative protection is to achieve the stability of order while the realization of order stability depends on the legitimacy of the system (Zhou, 2020). From the perspective of normativism, the system operation rules formulated should maintain integrity, compatibility, and defensiveness for a certain period of time in order to meet the requirements of overall protection, diversification of subjects and interference of regulatory administrative power in cultivated land protection. However, from the perspective of functionalism, the demand for cultivated land protection is developed in change, and the growth of rules is a time-consuming process. From the BFPR to the promulgation of the CLPL, from partial norms to overall norms, in the process of gradual development of system rules, there is always an adaptive relationship between rule values and needs. When the opposition and adaptation between essence and existence, value and demand are dissolved into the loop of the infinite cycle of APCL, it is manifested as a circular demonstration process that mixes value and demand. As a result, the APCL is transformed into a “fluid” without vertices and layers. To avoid the occurrence of this phenomenon, the value basis of APCL should be disassembled with “norms” as noumenon and “functions” for use, specific norms and coordination should be carried out on the basis of dismantling, and the protection means should be specifically carried out after coordination, so as to realize the legitimacy of APCL, and the path map for achieving the legitimacy of APCL is shown in Figure 4.

The system of laws and regulations on the APCL is viewed from a holistic perspective, the CLPL is perceived as the Basic Law, and the LAL and the BFPR are also important parts of the system. As a comprehensive protection system, the legal regulation and control methods of administrative law and other departmental laws has gradually been integrated into the APCL in the process of development. Among them, the Administrative Punishment Law regulates the punishment behavior of land administrative departments, the Administrative Reconsideration Law corrects the improper behavior of land management organs in the process of law enforcement, and the relevant administrative regulations on administrative public interest litigation and administrative contracts all play a role in the implementation of cultivated land protection policies. However, the existing traditional law departments do not adapt to specific legal issues related to cultivated land protection, and the isolated and scattered issues of laws and regulations such as the CLPL are difficult to coordinate in the field. In the overall value analysis under normativism, the dispersion between Article 20 of the CLPL and the LAL is essentially the absence of a consensual function. Under Article 20 of the CLPL, administrative contracts are dominated by administrative nature, while under the relevant provisions of the LAL, they are dominated by contracts. On the issue of succession between Article 18 of the CLPL and the BFPR, as well as the issue of “ordering corrections” in Article 50 of the CLPL, it is difficult for the systematic punishment function to effectively intervene. Under the premise of maintaining the integrity of the APCL system, if we want to use the traditional departmental law basis to solve the problem of isolation and dispersion of norms in the field, it is necessary to disassemble the function of agreeing and punishing of the overall value.

From the perspective of compatibility value of APCL, the “three subjects” recognized in the field of cultivated land protection include governments at all levels, rural collective economic organizations, and actual land users (farmers or new business entities), but the regulation and control mean of APCL are still mainly “government-peasants”. At present, the dualization of protection means and the lack of protection for new business entities have reduced the predictability of the behavior of social subjects, therefore it is inevitable that interests will be resisted and pluralistic will be divided. In the above-mentioned judicial cases, on the one hand, social subjects encounter administrative squeeze in cultivated land protection, on the other hand, even if social subjects participate in the actual work of cultivated land protection, the lack of public and private social responsibility of cultivated land interests urgently requires due regulation by the administrative protection system. At this time, the relevant subject responsibility should be clarified in the cultivated administrative protection system. The extensive participation of multiple subjects dilutes the clarity of the subject responsibility to some extent, which makes it difficult to identify and determine the main responsibility. In the face of complex social relations, it is necessary to rely on the subject normative system that combines punishment and relief, in which the legal punishment function is used for non-performance of subject responsibilities and legal remedies are given to those who are still squeezed after performing subject responsibilities to ensure diversity instead of a vicious circle of prevarication. By dismantling the compatibility value according to the punishment and relief functions, establishing the legitimacy of the entity and the predictability of the responsibility, the reasonable limit of all parties participating in cultivated land protection is confirmed while the enthusiasm of social subjects to participate in cultivated land protection is fully mobilized so as to realize the legitimacy of APCL.

In addition, it cannot be denied that in the field of cultivated land protection at this stage, government governance is in a guiding and dominant position, and in the process of further shrinking and adjusting government power, APCL should be more open and rational. On the basis of giving play to defensive value, it empowers the integration of government governance elements in the field of cultivated land protection. First, through the punishment function (necessary expansion and reasonable restriction of the scope of punishment), the government governance matters are standardized, institutionalized and procedural; Second, through the relief function, the deviation of administrative counterparts’ understanding of administrative behavior should be reversed, and build a communication hub between public participation, public management and government management, to meet the current trend of emphasizing openness and two-way government governance model. The third is to urge administrative organs to optimize cultivation and protection social services through public welfare functions, perform corresponding duties, and change from “cultivated land management” to” serving cultivated land,” in order to force the government to face new contradictions and make the right choice in the new development stage in the “changing” and “unchanged” new environment.

In order to highlight the integrity, compatibility and defensive value of APCL, and at the same time fully meet the punishment, relief, desirability and public welfare needs of APCL, the standardization and coordination of the CLPL should be carried out on the existing basis of the CLPL in terms of regulatory inheritance, subject construction, and responsibility subdivision. First of all, “the land replenished must be both qualitative and quantitative” should be clarified in the CLPL and free of the previous conflict of “alternative act” between BFPR and LAL; At the same time, the “compulsory law enforcement power” of land administration organs should be explained to solve the problems of the punishment of idle cultivated land and unused cultivated land for other purposes. And the issue of inheritance of penalties for idle cultivated land and cultivated land for other purposes under the CLPL and the BFPR on idle cultivated land and diverted cultivated land for other purposes needs to be fully discussed before the law is formally promulgated. Secondly, in terms of subject construction, in order to cope with the tendency of dualization of subjects in the old regulations, the structure of basic subjects (collective economic organizations and their members) + social subjects + security subjects (land administration departments, etc.) can be further derived on the basis of the “three subjects” and clarified in the CLPL. In addition, although the CLPL clarifies the responsibilities of local governments at all levels in the special chapter on “Legal Liability”, the regulation and control of local governments’ powers cannot be achieved overnight by stipulating responsibilities, therefore should be regulated by law from the time of decision-making, from “political decision” to “judicial decision".

At the same time, on the basis of the transformation of the CLPL, the adoption of “Grow Teeth” hard measures requires multiple measures to be further continued on the LAL and other regulations. To solve thorny problems such as the low level of relevant laws and regulations as well as the cross-border behavior of local governments, resolute and decisive measures are required. Strictly abide by the red line of 1.8 billion mu of cultivated land, sign a written guarantee of power and responsibility between the central and local governments, and use it as a hard target when evaluating political performance, implement an inspection policy that does not miss any criteria for evaluation, directly veto a certain leading cadre who does not meet the standard, and who bears the main responsibility can still be held accountable after leaving in order to strictly enforce the law and pursue responsibility. The revision of land regulations and the implementation of the “Grow Teeth” hard measures should focus on two points in the continuation of laws such as the LAL. Firstly, before the promulgation of the CLPL, the relevant provisions of the LAL should first be optimized: the clause “ordering corrections within a time limit” in Article 75 should be given the effect of administrative punishment, or the “ordering correction within a time limit” clause should be banned by referring to the application of the “order to stop production and business” clause of the Administrative Punishment Law of administrative acts in the field of land management in the subordinate position of administrative punishment measures; Grants the land and resources administration department the power to require the person involved to restore the basic cultivated land occupied, and restricts the authority and operating procedures of this power under Article 85, so as to avoid blind expansion of administrative power based on the improved provisions of Article 85; Based on the penalties imposed in Article 33, Article 18 of the BFPR was absorbed to consolidate the content of the article to avoid excessive penalties; There should be new provisions to regulate the idle use of basic cultivated land and prohibit the government’s erroneous cadastral registration and blind “drought to water” projects. Secondly, low-level laws and regulations should be optimized, and the compensation subjects of the “interim measures for compensation and incentives for cultivated land protection” and “measures for the protection of basic cultivated land economic compensation” in various provinces and cities should be uniformly stipulated in accordance with central policies, to avoid the situation that compensation responsibilities are not in place. In the “implementation rules for the work of accounting for supplementary balance” and other documents of various provinces and cities, the source of “supplement” land should be clarified, as well as the dual requirements of quantity and quality. In addition, under the unified planning of the LAL, each local government rule and regulation should make detailed provisions on the land reclamation tenure adjustment plan and the source of funds for land development and consolidation and issue the “Cultivated Land Protection Land Tenure Management Plan” and “Cultivated Land Protection Fund Management Measures” as soon as possible. The main responsibility of the government for errors in cadastral registration and the registration matters for changes in land ownership and use rights should also be clarified. A special cultivated land fund for cultivated land protection which is composed of part of the paid use fee for construction land and the conversion fee of cultivated land input by social capital investment should be set up to subsidize the loss of cultivated land of landless peasants.

In the supporting aspect of the risk prevention and control mechanism, firstly, the CLPL, the LAL and other relevant laws and regulations should be guided by more principles on the basis of clear rules. In the conflict prone period of the transformation of cultivated land use, the complexity of the interests and relationships of cultivated land makes the clear value of existing laws and regulations unable to maintain a good adaptability to cultivated land governance. Therefore strengthening the principle guidance of relevant laws and regulations, and forming a supporting application of rule-based governance and principle—based governance can not only deal with the new form of atypical food security risks, but also promote the further maintenance of the overall value of laws and regulations in the field of cultivated land protection. Secondly, in the regulations on cultivated land protection issued by the local government, the undertake and distribution of legal responsibility should be more preventive in advance to fill the information gap between the land destroyers (i.e. risk makers) and the victims, Meanwhile, it will prove that the burden distribution also turns from the victims to the makers, forcing the makers to maintain the obligation of observation at all times to ensure that the use of cultivated land and the technical level of pollution prevention and control are synchronized. Finally, basic laws and administrative regulations such as the CLPL and local government rules should be balanced between stability and flexibility. The administrative protection system of cultivated land should also consciously absorb soft law sources such as cultivated land governance policies, industry norms and professional standards in the ecological field, which is conducive to meeting the diversity requirements of legal order of risk prevention and control in the field of cultivated land protection.

After the “function” dismantling of the “normative” orientation, in the specific development of the punishment function, determining the standard for scope of punishment is on the top priority. First, the cultivated land protection policy must be used as the previous guide, and the requirements of lawful administration must also be met under the premise of meeting the cultivated land protection policy. The purpose of administrative punishment is to prove the legality of administrative acts made by administrative organs, such as administrative organs imposing extremely high fines on acts that cause land damage e.g., excavation, collapse, and occupation to meet the first point. However, it would lack legality and meet the requirements of administration in accordance with law which makes it difficult to enter the scope of administrative punishment. Second, it must have the validity of administrative management. If the administrative organ imposes a penalty on it for confiscation of illegal gains, it does not have the effectiveness of administrative management under this item, because it lacks obvious benefits to cultivated land. On the contrary, forcing the offending unit to reclaim the damaged cultivated land meets the requirements under this and satisfies the first two points of the functional system. Third, it is necessary to have the economy of maintaining the implementation of cultivated land protection policies. Fourth, if the acts that meet the functions of the first three points are interpreted as administrative punishments, it will greatly increase the law enforcement costs of administrative organs and the judicial costs of court trials, and at this time, it is also necessary to summarize the common measures for administrative punishment of cultivated land in judicial practice. The administrative measures that meet the requirements of the first three functions and have a high probability of appearing will be interpreted as administrative penalties. In summary, administrative measures that meet the four requirements in the functional system have the nature of administrative penalties, and vice versa.

In terms of the public welfare function of cultivated land administrative protection, judging from the provisions of the current law, procuratorial suggestions are only unnecessary links in the legal supervision process, which will not have a substantial impact on the rights and obligations of the parties, and are not a precursor process with procedural coercion in the measures to deal with the expansion of government power. In view of the problem that the relief needs are difficult to meet, and the defensive value is fragile in the judicial practice of cultivated land protection administrative public interest litigation, it is urgent to integrate the procuratorial recommendations in the field of cultivated land protection in accordance with the effect of special procedures to urge the government to perform public service functions and continue to provide “beneficial goods” for the society. In the context of the blind expansion of administrative power and the lack of prominent subjects of government responsibility for cultivation and protection, if the administrative organ still refuses to correct the corresponding rigid behavior after the procuratorial organ has fulfilled the soft procedures recommended by the procuratorate, the reality shows that the court ruling, as the last line of defense, may not achieve procedural justice. Therefore, in the field of administrative public interest litigation, procuratorial recommendations should be given binding force in the sense of a rigid system, that is, they should have an impact on substantive legal relationships. And in the case that the administrative organ ignores the content of the procuratorial recommendation, the procuratorial organ may apply to the people’s court directly to enforce the refusal to make corrections. For the issue of fragile defensive value, making procuratorial recommendations binding can effectively transfer the pressure of courts in cultivation and protection trials, highlight the functions of procuratorial organs in public interest litigation, strengthen the unified understanding and application of the subjective and objective aspects of litigation structure and litigation purpose as well as promote the judicial community. Reconstructing the judgment of the constituent elements such as “the public interest has not been separated from the state of infringement” and “non-performance of statutory duties” is conducive to strengthen the supervision of the procuratorate over the actual work of cultivated land protection by governments at the same level, so as to curb the expansion of administrative power while promoting the participation of social capital in cultivated land protection. It is worth noting that when urging the government to export “beneficial goods”, it should be wary of the government’s “beneficial” output above individual rights and interests. Once a certain government action in the field of cultivated land protection is marked as beneficial, the public interest and public demand reflected behind it become untestable concepts. And under the intersection of needs to be verified and untestable reality, the government may be pushed onto the altar of the tester, thus assuming its own function of defining what is “beneficial”. At this stage, when the procuratorial recommendations have not yet been given enforcement power, how to promote the procuratorial recommendations in the field of cultivated land protection to accurately identify beneficial public goods and give full play to the rigid enforcement effect of flexible supervision rights needs to be gradually improved in practice.

For the relief function, in response to the crisis that the public welfare needs of cultivated land administrative protection cannot be met, it is necessary to establish an administrative reconsideration committee for cultivated land protection, so as to improve the efficiency of the government’s system of self-inspection, self-correction and self-supervision. In committees, personnel selected by the land administration organs should be assigned to exercise the power of administrative reconsideration in an overall manner, and the judicial administrative departments should select personnel to undertake administrative reconsideration tasks within a detailed framework. The reconsideration organs, reconsideration bodies and reconsideration committees rely on each other in their duties and constrain each other in terms of authority. The exercise and supervision of powers should be integrated, which is conducive to the unification of reconsideration resources, the institutionalization of reconsideration powers, and the standardization of reconsideration basis, while enhancing the people’s confidence in the administrative reconsideration system and gradually making administrative reconsideration one of the main ports for dredging administrative disputes. In addition to administrative reconsideration, it is also necessary to carry out external supervision of the implementation process of the three major systems of cultivated land protection to supervise, restrict and contain them, so as to activate and increase the institutional stock of the basic cultivated land protection system, strengthen the institutional authority of the cultivated land occupation and supplement balance system and improve the implementation efficacy and utilization performance of the land development, consolidation and reclamation system. Effectively link legal supervision and disciplinary supervision in the field of cultivated land; Solve problems such as the connection of land evidence materials, the screening of default and violation of law of land administrative contracts, and the separation of preliminary investigation by land administrative organs from the investigation and collection of evidence by judicial organs; Taking the spirit of legislation and the central directives on cultivated land protection as the guiding principle, make efforts on “constant” and “long-term”; Form a good atmosphere of supervision and acceptance of supervision in the realization of procedural justice and protection of rights and promptly punish problems discovered daily in accordance with the law. Improve the system for conducting special inspections, investigations and studies on phenomena such as non-disclosure and opacity in administrative law enforcement in the field of cultivated land protection; Dig deep into the mechanism behind illegal problems while dealing with them, and fully study and judge the ecological problems of cultivated land and the political and judicial ecological problems behind them. At the same time, give full play to the visual and close-up advantages of the land administration department in the corresponding problems, on the one hand, establish a yardstick for the all-round coverage of cultivated land problems, and on the other hand, focus on important projects in the approval of cultivated land projects. Prevent small things from evolving and grasp small problems as soon as possible.