China pledges land reform

BEIJING: China will carry out a groundbreaking trial programme that may allow farmers to sell land in a step towards liberalising rural property transactions currently monopolised by the government.

The ability to sell land is expected to accelerate China’s urbanisation, a key driver of its decades-long economic boom, by enabling farmers to realise value from their assets, facilitating their move to the cities.

Under current law, all land is ultimately owned by the state or by rural collectives, while farmers can retain usage rights in the countryside.

Only the government has the power to appropriate land, often with little or no compensation, and can then sell it to property developers at a huge profit, leading to widespread social resentment and frequently triggering unrest.

A total of 33 county-level areas including Beijing’s Daxing district — the site of the capital’s new airport — will suspend some regulations that ban the free trading of some non-farming land, said Fu Ying, a spokeswoman for the National People’s Congress (NPC), China’s legislature.

The programme will allow “rural land for business purposes” to be traded on the market, meaning farmers are no long restricted to selling it to the government, according to a report on the NPC’s website.

“This reform is to support the development of agriculture modernisation and urbanisation, and it intends to better protect farmers’ rights and interests during the process of reforms,” Ms Fu said.

The Communist Party pledged in 2013 to grant farmers the same rights as urban dwellers by creating a legal basis for them to transfer or rent “land use rights”.