Land violators in China have been dealt with too leniently in
the past, a senior government official said over the weekend.
Zhang Xinbao, director of the Law Enforcement and Supervision
Department of the Ministry of Land Resources, once again pledged to
toughen the department's stance towards corrupt officials.
From November 2004 to August 2006, land resource departments in
a province in central China recommended that 96 people were handed
Party or administrative penalties for illegal land use but only
half were punished, he was quoted as saying by Monday's Beijing
News newspaper.
During the same period, 32 people were handed over to judicial
authorities but only seven were given criminal sentences, the paper
said, without giving the name of the city.
From 2005 to 2006, a coastal city applied to local courts to
enforce verdicts on 937 land violation cases, but only one was
enforced, the paper reported.
Zhang said a satellite survey last month showed 22 percent of
new acquisitions in 90 medium-sized and large cities were
illegal.
Data collected from October 2005 to October 2006 also showed
more than 80 percent of acquisitions were illegal in eight cities,
where more than 16,000 hectares were illegally used, said
Zhang.
"More timely exposure should be given to those land violators so
as to attract more media and the public to join in the supervision
of land use," Chen Jieren, a Beijing scholar, was quoted by the
paper as saying.
The world's most populous nation faces a worrying farmland
shortage. Its arable land declined from 122 million hectares to
121.8 million hectares over 2006, almost hitting the minimum level
of 120 million hectares, as specified by the central
government.?
(Xinhua News Agency November 6, 2007)