Cases involving the illegal seizure of farmland have something
to do with the requisitioning of land by government from farmers
for non-agricultural use.
The following questions reveal, to some extent, the unreasonable
mechanism and outdated legal rules behind irregularities in this
area.
When the cost of the requisition of land is 10 times or even 20
or 30 times lower than the market value of the land, is it
reasonable or fair for speculators or even local governments to
profit from this process?
Why are the farmers who have been tending to this land for
generations pushed aside with only 5 percent when the speculators,
local governments and village committees divide the bulk of the
profits between them?
If such a pattern of land profit distribution continues to exist
for years to come, can we expect to put the brakes on the rapid
decrease in cultivated land?
The Ministry of Land and Resources will start an investigation
into the process of land requisition and research the reform of the
mechanism.
According to the land law, cultivated land is owned collectively
by villagers, but the government has the right to requisition it
for non-agricultural use. When a piece of land is occupied with
government approval, the compensation for farmers should be no more
than 25 times the profit the piece of land has made with its crops
in the previous three years.
The stipulation might be appropriate when the land is
requisitioned for the construction of major State projects. Yet, in
most cases, much land has been requisitioned for the construction
of commercial housing or some other commercial projects.
The price of a piece of land could be dozens of times more than
the compensation paid to the farmers.
It is obvious that the way the profits are distributed is
unreasonable and unfair to the farmers. The consequences have
already proved to be disastrous in many ways. It has made the
requisition of land the easiest means for speculators and local
governments to make profits.
Those farmers who have lost their land in this process have
been, on many occasions, reduced to a desperate situation, having
no land to farm on and no money with which to start their own
businesses. This has become a source of social unrest.
If the situation continues, it will be almost impossible to
protect our limited arable land resources, the rapid shrinking of
which will have a serious impact on the country's food
security.
(China Daily June 23, 2006)