|
Members of the National Committee of the Chinese People's
Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC), attended a plenary
meeting of the annual session Monday, called for strict policies
and measures to be taken for protecting cultivated land and
fundamental interests of farmers, and amending the Law on Land
Management as soon as possible.
Liu Minfu, vice chairman the Central Committee of the
Revolutionary Committee of the Chinese Kuomintang, denounced the
willful occupation of farmland in the name of setting up
development zones, in some areas.
He blamed the wrongdoing by some local officials and the
existing criteria to assess the merits of government officials.
Leading officials at different levels should be aware of a
scientific concept of development, he said.
Yang Xiangbo, an entrepreneur member from the Hong Kong Special
Administrative Region, also proposed to curb the so-call
"development zone craze" by improving the existing laws and
regulations on land requisition.
China now boasts 500-600 development zones, covering a total
of3.55 million hectares, according to official figures. It was
impossible to invest such an astronomical sum of funds, Yang said,
noting that large tracts of land were left untapped in these
so-called development zones. Meanwhile, he added, a lot of farmers
have lost their land and become jobless.
Many local governments have cashed in on the requisition of land
from farmers, due to the big gap between the compensation paid by
government to farmers and prices paid by developers to government
for the purchase of the land, according to Yang.
Even more serious is that in a host of cases, corrupt officials
and illegal businessmen have pocketed the added value from the
trading of land-use rights, said the Hong Kong-based entrepreneur,
who used to live in Luhe county, of south China's Guangdong
province, and migrated to Hong Kong in the 1980s.
Hong Fuzeng, vice chairman of Jiu San Society, proposed that
great efforts be made to increase the output of low-yield farmland
by relying on science and technology.
The per-capita average of cropland acreage in China is only less
than 0.1 hectares, approximately 45 percent of the world's average,
Hong said, noting that only one third of the country's total
cultivated land acreage is high-yielding and irrigable.
(Xinhua News Agency March 8, 2004)
|
