Land sitting idle that is the property of China's military
should be put up for public auction, the Ministry of Land and
Resources (MLR) said yesterday.
The new rules for the transfer of unused military lands were
jointly released by the MLR, the Ministry of Finance, and the
People's Liberation Army General Logistics Department.
The idle military land was previously transferred through
agreements outside the framework of local supervision. It will now
instead be included in the land supply plan of local governments,
and transfer to the local land market will go to the highest bidder
in an open tendering process.
The rules also require that the idle military land should first
meet the demand of military units.
In a related story, according to an official with the MLR
yesterday, China has used satellite remote sensing techniques to
check illegal land use in 90 cities.
"The techniques will help find out and check illegal land use in
time and give full play to the role of government macro-control in
land supply," said the official with the ministry's bureau of law
enforcement and supervision, who didn't give his name.
The official said satellite pictures using remote sensing
techniques can show the changing of a city's newly used land for
construction in a period, thereby find out whether the involved
land use breaks laws.
The government checks will focus on activities like approving
lands in contrary to government plans and industrial policies and
illegally expropriating farmland for construction, according to the
official.
(Xinhua News Agency February 28, 2007)