China has established a new system to keep track of land use in
a bid to curb runaway investment and protect the interests of
farmers.
The State Council has authorized the Ministry of Land and
Resources (MLR) to supervise and overhaul land use and management
by local governments, Vice Premier Zeng Peiyan told a national
conference on land control.
The State Council also decided to set up a national office to
oversee land use, as well as nine regional bureaux, said the
official.
"A major problem this year in land management is the excessive
expansion of low-cost industrial land," said Gan Zangchun, the
newly-appointed deputy state superintendent-general of land.
China recorded an economic growth of 10.9 percent in the first
half of this year on the back of a 30-percent growth in fixed
assets investment, the highest figures in recent years.
The government and many land experts believe that illegal land
supply is a leading cause of the runaway investment, reports
said.
A survey of 16 cities by the MLR last year showed that nearly 50
percent of the new land under development was acquired illegally.
What's worse, the figure was as high as 90 percent in some
cities.
To stop the trend, the State Council released an urgent notice
on controlling land supply in September.
The new rules warn local leaders that they will be penalized if
they fail to stop or investigate illegal land sales in areas under
their jurisdiction, he said.
Officials who sell land for lower than the minimum price will be
prosecuted according to the new rules, Gan said.
Reining in local governments is a major target of the new
policy, because "local governments are actually behind almost all
the major cases of illegal land use," said Zhang Xinbao, an MLR
official in charge of supervision, in a previous interview.
Thanks to land control measures in recent years, the total
supply of land in 2005 has dropped 17.9 percent year-on-year, Gan
said.
"At the same time, China's economic increase has remained above
9 percent year-on-year. This shows the nation's economic
development pattern has begun to change (in a positive way)," he
noted.
Another focal point of the new system is to seek better
protection of the interests of farmers whose land is sold by local
governments, said the official.
"Farmers are the group who will benefit most from the new
policy," Gan said.
Revenues from land sales must first be used to pay for the
resettlement of farmers and compensation for their loss of crops,
according to the new rules.
"And more money will be invested in infrastructure in rural
areas, as well as for city residents with low incomes in the
future."
The notice made clear for the first time that if the sale price
of any piece of land is not enough to cover the cost of resettling
farmers, local governments must pay from its pool of land sale
revenues.
Local governments should make sure that farmers who have lost
their land are properly trained for new jobs and provided with new
means to support themselves in a sustainable way, the notice
said.
China faces the extremely difficult task of retaining 120
million hectares of arable land by 2010, officials said. Statistics
indicated that the nation's farmland area stood at 122 million
hectares last year, 8 million hectares less than 10 years ago.
(China Daily October 2, 2006)