Beijing vows crackdown on land grabs
By Candy Zeng
SHENZHEN - China's galloping property market has become a growing headache for
the country's central government, which has been forced to increase the land
supply while worrying that corrupt local-government officials will use the
real-estate boom as an opportunity to hasten the depletion of the country's
shrinking farmlands.
The worry is not ungrounded, as Beijing's campaign to crack down on illegal
land acquisitions during the past year has failed to
stop many local officials from abusing their powers to grab land illegally from
farmers.
The Ministry of Land and Resources (MLR) recently announced that 20% of the
24,245 cases of land-law violations from January to May were committed by local
governments or their related bodies. The total amount of illegally seized land
amounted to 14,700 hectares, and 80% of that total involved local governments.
"We must strictly enforce the land law," Xu Shaoshi, the minister of land and
resources, said at a recent news conference where he reiterated the country's
policy of preserving no less than 120 million hectares of arable land. His
speech was made just one year after nine Land Inspection Bureaus were set up
across the country to rein in rampant land acquisition. Xu, also head of the
centralized land-control system, urged his colleagues and local officials to
fight against illegal nibbling of arable land.
Xu said land inspectors would redouble their efforts to catch violators.
The world's most populous nation faces a severe farmland shortage. At the end
of last year, arable land was 121.8 million hectares compared with 122 million
hectares in 2005, according to official statistics. China has about 260 million
hectares of uncultivated land that could be used, he said without giving
additional details.
China's land is publicly owned but the land systems are different in cities and
the rural areas. Urban land in the city is owned by the state, while the
farmland is owned by farmers living there collectively. Only the central
government has the right to allocate land resources and change the land-use
rights for both rural and urban land.
But in recent years, the rising property market and regional competition by
local officials for greater growth in local gross domestic product (GDP) have
seen many local officials defying the land regulations.
A notable case was in Quyang county in northern China's Hebei province. Last
month the county government allocated 6.7 hectares of cornfield for an
industrial project without fairly compensating the farmers. The almost
1-meter-tall green corn plants were shoveled out by bulldozers as the helpless
villagers watched.
The brutal land seizure was approved by the Quyang County Land and Resources
Bureau despite protests by 29 of 90 farmer households. For the 31 households
who gave in, each received 30,800 yuan (US$4,000) per mu (one-fifteenth
of a hectare) plus a 1,000 yuan bonus for "positive cooperation", a local
official surnamed Li told reporters with the Democracy and Law newspaper. Those
who refused the offer said the amount was far too low to assure them a decent
future.
The Democracy and Law reporters then discovered that the bureau didn't get
legal approval for the full land acquisition and the amount of land taken for
the project was larger than what had been approved.
The Quyang case is just the tip of the iceberg.
In Beijing, the municipal Land and Resources Bureau was brought to court by
five villagers who claimed that the bureau failed to prevent a village official
from illegally transferring 2,000 mu (133 hectares) of farmland. The
land was labeled "barren" and leased to a businessman for 60 years by the
village official in 2004. The Beijing Land and Resources Bureau received
complaints but didn't respond. It then admitted that the land should be
classified as farmland - not barren - and said the acquisition was against the
law.
However, despite the Beijing land bureau's decision, the case is still winding
its way through the courts and the outcome is uncertain. History suggests that
few government officials have been severely punished for illegally transferring
farmland. From 2001 to 2005, only 0.1% of accused land-law violators were
imprisoned and another 1% were only reprimanded and fined, while all the others
were found innocent. In 2006, the authorities uncovered 131,000 cases of
land-law violations and only one person in 261 cases was convicted.
Lax law enforcement in land-seizure cases has led to the enormous growth of
such abuses by local governments, said Li Yafang, a standing member of the
country's advisory body, the Chinese People's Political Consultative
Conference. Of those officials who were severely punished, most were
low-ranking ones, Li said. The more powerful officials were "overlooked", and
that has led to more land grabbing, he said.
Land transactions are also a major source of income for local governments. A
1994 taxation-distribution policy allows taxes and surcharges from land
transfers to go to local governments. Thus the local governments have the
incentive to increase the taxes and surcharges for real estate to line their
pockets additionally.
According to research by the State Council, money from land acquisitions
accounted for 60% of the extra-budgetary revenues for some local governments in
China's eastern coastal regions.
An official survey showed that the total income from land acquisitions for
local governments exceeded 1 trillion yuan between 1992 to 2003. The income
rate increased from 2001 to 2003, reaching 910 billion yuan, or 35% of the
total financial income of China's local governments. In the first quarter of
2006, land-grant income reached 300 billion yuan, or half of the local
governments' total income.
As long as the local governments have the monopoly on land supplies and are one
of the major beneficiaries of land transactions, the tug-of-war between the
central and local governments is not going to end soon.
Candy Zeng is a freelance writer based in Shenzhen.
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