A revised land acquisition system will better protect the rights of farmers, minister of land and resources Sun Wensheng told a national work conference Friday.

While not divulging specifics of the changes planned for the country's decades-old land acquisition system, he pledged they would focus on the interests of farmers.

The scale of land subject to acquisition will be strictly controlled, while the acquisition procedures will feature a more efficient compensation mechanism for farmers, he said.

Infringements of farmers' rights and interests in the process of land acquisition has become a hot topic at the ongoing session of the 10th National People's Congress (NPC), the country's top legislator.

Statistics indicate that about 40 million farmers have lost their land to acquisition.

Many, however, are not satisfied with the compensation given to them, while others have received no compensation at all.

The Constitution amendment proposal, which stipulates clearly compensations for farmers having lost their land to acquisition, was warmly welcomed at the 10th NPC session.

One expert in the field, who declined to be named, said more detailed stipulations regarding the compensation mechanism are expected to be spelt out in the new rule. He said: "Almost certainly, the stipulated compensations will be much higher than the present ones.''

China's current Law on Land Management stipulates that compensation cannot exceed 30 times the average yearly output value of the target land during the three years prior to acquisition.

Sun also Friday vowed to step up the ministry's internal fight against corruption.

As many as 605 land officials were punished last year for dereliction of duty or job-related crimes. Sun warned the number could increase this year if there are still officials prepared to turn a deaf ear to the ministry's repeated pleas for transparency.

The ministry received 4,041 complaint letters and petitions last year, over 50 percent up over the previous year.

More than 70 percent of the total petitions the Communist Party of China's Central Commission for Discipline Inspection received in last year were in some way related to land abuse.

The ministry's statistics indicate that China lost 2.53 million hectares of arable land last year, an increase of 50 percent on the previous year.

As a result, the country's total area of cultivated land had dropped to about 123 million hectares at the end of 2003, roughly 12.8 percent of its total land area.

To effectively curb the decreasing quantity of arable land, Sun told the conference of proposals to further tighten up land supply for construction purposes, especially those related to the steel, electrolytic aluminum and cement industries.

The National Development and Reform Commission said in a recent circular that these industries have shown indications of overheating.

Only 120,000 hectares of cultivated land will be approved by the ministry for transfer for construction use this year, 23.4 percent less than last year.

Observers warn that the temptation for local land officials to bend the rules could be even greater this year because real estate developers will try their utmost to win a slice of the shrinking cake.

(China Daily March 13, 2004)