OPINION> Commentary
Efficiency of land use
(China Daily)
Updated: 2008-06-26 07:44

Keeping the total area of arable land at no less than 120 million hectares and intensifying the efficiency of land use were the highlights of the publicity for the 18th National Land Day that fell yesterday. It was by no means a meaningless ritual.

June 25 was designated as National Land Day in 1991, when the central government realized the increasingly sharp contradiction between ever-increasing demand for land to facilitate urbanization and industrial development and the imperative to keep enough arable land for food security.

With per capita arable land of only 0.092 hectares, China can never afford to loosen its control on the approval of land transfer for non-agricultural programs. Even with the strict stipulation that occupation of basic farm fields for non-agricultural purposes must have the approval of the central government, irregularities aimed at circumventing the rule occur quite often in various localities.

To be honest, it is both unrealistic and impossible for the central government to completely stop the transfer of land for non-agricultural use since the country is in the process of massive urbanization and industrialization. But now the total area of arable land stands at 122 million hectares, and it will be very difficult to keep it from being further reduced.

In such circumstances, intensifying land use efficiency becomes the only way to protect the arable land. It is possible to do so because waste has been a serious problem in land use in the past decades. The total area of land that has been transferred but is lying idle amounts to 2.7 million hectares, and another 13 million hectares of land has been wasted in one way or another, according to statistics from the Ministry of Land and Resources.

If these land resources can be used for urban expansion and industrial projects, the pressure will be greatly eased on the protection of arable land at least for the near future.

The approval for using land for non-agricultural purposes must be further tightened to prevent real estate developers or local governments from hoarding land for higher profits in the future. And land hoarding is one of the major reasons why prices for land transfer are prohibitively high and housing prices even higher as a consequence.

The economic leverages such as taxes and financial policies must be employed to encourage the use of idle or wasted land.

In addition, policies must provide villagers with enough incentives to farm their land rather than sell or lease it for non-agricultural purposes.

(China Daily 06/26/2008 page8)