No requisition of rural land will be approved without the
endorsement of affected farmers, the Ministry of Land and Resources
announced yesterday, abolishing a decades-old practice of only
publishing plans after they had been approved by the central
government.
Wang Shiyuan, head of the general office of the ministry, called
the new measure "a solid step forward" in protecting farmers
against governments abusing their land requisition rights.
Although the country's current Land Managerial Law does require
publishing the scale of the land requisitioned and the compensation
involved, it has proved hard for farmers to get the plans changed
once they have been approved by the central government.
From now on, Wang said, all rural land requisition should be
subjected to discussions with farmers and undergo public hearings
on its compensation before being submitted to the ministry for
scrutiny. Wang admitted at yesterday's press conference that abuses
of land requisition powers have become a major factor of
instability in Chinese society.
Not only are a few Chinese governments at various levels free
from farmers asking for their requisitioned land back, but some
staggering cases are deeply rooted in the unfair treatment of
farmers involved in land requisition. One such farmer burned
himself on Tian'anmen Square earlier this year.
The crux of the issue is the compensation for farmers who lose
their land to requisition. In most cases, the farmers complain
about compensation which is much lower than the true market value
of their land.
Although the government is entitled to requisition land for the
benefit of society at much lower costs than those in a comparable
case of commercial development, Wang said the government is obliged
to secure those farmers' livelihoods in the long term. And the
livelihood of most of them hangs on their small pieces of land, he
said.
Statistics from the ministry indicate local governments can
requisition 1 mu or 0.07 hectare of cultivated land from farmers at
a compensation varying from a meager 300 yuan (US$36.20) in
comparatively backward places to a rare 5,000 yuan (US$603.90) in
more advanced regions such as Beijing.
Although the revolutionary move of the ministry has been warmly
received, doubts were surging regarding the execution of the new
stipulation considering that local land authorities are actually
subordinates of various local governments as well.
(China Daily November 20, 2003)