China's Ministry of Land Resources (MLR)kicked off a 100-day campaign on Monday to crack down on
local governments which illegally transfer householders' land to
property developers.
The campaign will target those officials who fail to seek
authorization from higher authorities for land use and those who
flout decrees to expand the size of development zones.
Zhang Xinbao, director of the Land Enforcement and Supervision
Department of the Ministry of Land Resources, admitted land
violators had been dealt with too leniently in China in the past
and pledged to toughen its stance towards corrupt officials.
"Quite a number of violators were fined or disciplined ... a
legion of those penalized were at village level. Only in recent
years has our enforcement moved to target officials at county and
city levels. Last year, two provincial officials were penalized,"
Zhang said.
Statistics from the MLR show in 2006 alone, 3,094 officials
received Party or administrative penalties, taking up 35.6 percent
of the total 8,698 between 2,000 and 2006. Another 501 were given
criminal sentences, accounting for 41 percent of the total 1,221 in
the past seven years. From January to August, 893 officials were
penalized and 245 landed criminal charges.
The MLR will expose a number of land violation cases next week
to bring shame on perpetrators, the ministry said.
Land violations have evolved into a sticky issue in China as the
central government order promulgated in 2004 to implement "the
strictest land management policy" has continued to hit a variety of
snags at local level.
On one hand, some government officials still have an impulse to
attract capital and technology by offering investors cheap or even
free land resources, a practice that was rife along the east coast
in the early period of China's economic reform and opening-up. On
the other, land yields remain a steady source of fiscal revenue for
local governments.
Lured by such immediate local interests, some governments have
stealthily restored development zones which were closed down years
ago or acquiesced the management of legal development zones to
invite business for abolished ones.
Since a national overhaul to shut down inefficient or idle
development zones began in 2003, the number of development zones in
China and their aggregate land size both shrunk by more than 70
percent to 1,568 and 9,949 square kilometers respectively by the
end of 2006.
"If we allow violators to get away with their perpetrations,
development zones would sprawl rapidly and consume more land," Gan
Zangchun, deputy director-general of the country's land inspection
authority, warned.
Rapid urbanization has triggered outrage from some farmers who
were not properly compensated for the farmland they lost. It also
led to a drastic decline in the area of land available for
cultivation which prompted the government to set a minimum land
area of 1.8 billion mu (120 million hectares) to feed its
people.
Domestic policy makers started to track the speed and scale of
new land supply in non-agriculture sectors each year in 2004 to
control the total land supply and boost overall macro-economic
control.
"Finding a way round authorities' land use supervision is
detrimental to the interests of farmers and may spawn misleading
economic indicators and disrupt the implementation of
macro-economic policies," Gan said.
After four years of double-digit growth, the world's fourth
largest economy registered a 11.5-percent rise in GDP in the first
half. With its consumer price index, a major barometer of
inflation, surging to a ten-year-high of 6.5 percent in August,
there is a rising concern that the economy as marched to the edge
of overheating.
Land violations have become increasingly discreet in recent
years. According to Gan, in the first two years of the policy
change (2004-2006) many government officials blatantly approved the
illegal use of land. After two decrees were released in 2004 and
2006, such violations became rare but the cases of circumventing
laws and regulations started to shoot upwards.
National figures on these perpetrations are still being counted,
but a recent overhaul on the newly-added land for construction in
70 cities shows nine percent of the requisitioned land has been put
onto the market in the name of leasing to avoid prior approval. In
one major city, about 67.4 percent of the land provided to local
township enterprises was put on the market in this way.
Gan said that most of the phony lease contracts were signed by
township governments, village committees and individual farmers.
"Our stance is very clear. Administrative leaders will be held
responsible if they turn a blind eye to land violations or fail to
punish perpetrators in line with laws and regulations," Zhang
Xinbao said.
(Xinhua News Agency September 18, 2007)