The central government should have a nationwide land use
registration and supervision system to curb rampant reclamation of
land from farmers by local and grass-roots governments, experts
say.
Jiang Zhongyi, a senior researcher with the Agricultural Economic
Research Center under the Ministry of Agriculture,
said data collected should include the size, quality rating and
owner of every single piece of land in the country.
"The central government should send special staff with enough
training to supervise changes to land use contracts, and whether
the changes are legal or illegal," said Jiang.
Jiang said the system can stop local governments from illegally
reclaiming lands from farmers.
Some local governments take back land from farmers for business
purposes but fail to report the change of ownership to provincial
or central governments.
They avoid doing so to circumvent the tight restrictions the
central government has on the reclamation of arable land for
business use.
The nation now has 128 million hectares of arable land, feeding a
population of around 1.3 billion.
Jiang's suggestion was supported by a group of officials and
experts contacted by China Daily. The call for change comes
a week before the Rural Land Contract Law, which was passed by the
Standing Committee of the National People's Congress last August,
and will take effect on March 1.
"The law targets the rampant abuse of local administrative power in
breaches of rural land contracts but more concrete measures are
needed to supervise enforcement," said Li Ping from the Beijing
Representative Office of the United States-based Rural Development
Institute.
Li
said the system suggested by Jiang would help enforce the law and
protect the rights of farmers to use contracted land.
The new law affirms farmers' land use rights.
Under a system which began in 1978, each household signs a contract
with local authorities for the right to grow crops on a certain
amount of land, depending on the size of the family.
The law ensures that farmers' rights to use land under contract
will not change for at least 30 years. It stipulates the term of a
contract is 30 years for arable land, 30 to 50 years for grassland
and 30 to 70 years for woodland.
More importantly, the law defines a contract right as a property
right, which means under the current collective ownership system in
China, farmers can lease, transfer or exchange land they contract
within the contract term.
Experts say that these two reforms are essential to accelerating
the development of China's rural areas.
"The farmers who are reluctant to work on the land can turn their
burden over to those who like farming, and it can help develop
large-scale production and accelerate urbanization," said Xiang
Zhaolun, office director of the State Council's Finance and Economy
Development Leading Group.
However, some local officials have arbitrarily shortened the term
of land contracts and reallocated land use rights without farmers'
consent.
It
must be stressed that only farmers can make the decision to
transfer land use rights. Rural officials can only provide
necessary services to facilitate such transfers, said Xiang.
"Interference with administrative orders should be forbidden and
punished," said Xiang.
Xiang said that transferring farmland use rights to non-farming
entities and individuals should be curbed.
"Before the rural labor force is shifted to non-agricultural
sectors, the large-scale concentration of farmland may lead to
employment problems," said Xiang.
(China Daily February 24, 2003)