Draft law seeks to ease land disputes

Scholars applauded a draft amendment to the Land Administration Law passed by the State Council on Wednesday, saying it will substantially increase the compensation for farmland expropriation in China's rural areas, though more work needs to be done to protect villagers' rights.

The draft amendment altered the existing compensation rules for farmers whose collectively owned land is expropriated, according to the State Council.

However, the amendment and regulation, which experts say will benefit farmers amid frequent land disputes in China's rural areas, may not be sufficient or effective.

The State Council said in a statement that "too much rural land has been expropriated too quickly as industrialization and urbanization accelerates. It not only affects stability in the countryside but also threatens grain security." The draft will be submitted to the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress, China's top legislature, for deliberations, according to the statement.

Jiang Mingan, a law professor with Peking University, told the Global Times that the amendment will increase the compensation standard to at least 10 times its current amount.

"Too much farmland has been expropriated by the local government and sold to developers at much higher than the original price when they bought it from farmers," said Jiang, adding that farmers currently get a maximum 60,000 yuan in compensation per mu (667 square meters) of land, which is less than 100 yuan per square meter.

The current land expropriation compensation standard, according to the Land Administration Law, is a package that compensates people for land, attachments or green crops on the land and villagers' resettlement. The package must not exceed 30 times the average output value of the land three years prior to its expropriation, the law says.

Dang Guoying, a researcher with the Rural Development Institute under the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (CASS), told the Global Times that the regulation and changes to the law will help protect farmland, improve urbanization and the rural economy, and ease disputes. Land disputes and protests have become a major factor behind unrest in rural areas, said Jiang.

The Wukan protest in Shanwei, Guangdong Province in September 2011 was one of the biggest farmer protests caused by land disputes and official corruption. For years, village officials had been secretly selling farmland to developers without notifying farmers.

"An increase in compensation will definitely ease the wealth gap between urban and rural areas and improve the living conditions of farmers, but it will be meaningless if the expropriation process is not transparent," said Wukan villager Zhang Jianxing, who was one of the protest leaders.

Some 6,000 mu of land had been illegally expropriated in the village since the 1990s, Zhang said, and after years of protests, 4,000 mu of land was returned to the villagers. Around 7,000 villagers received 550 yuan in compensation per person for part of the expropriated land, which only accounted for a small fraction of the price at which it was sold to developers, he said.

"I'm worried that it'll still be deals between the government and developers," Zhang said.

More changes should be made to the law to ease disputes, suggested Jiang, who said land should be expropriated only when it is used for public interest projects, such as subway and expressway construction.

"I'm more concerned about who will decide on the compensation standard. Forced expropriation and demolitions will happen again if farmers don't get to negotiate," Yu Jianrong, another CASS rural expert, said in a Weibo Q&A online exchange yesterday.

"Farmers should have the right to bargain and say no to land expropriation, and this right can't be taken away because of some official compensation standard," Yu said.

"The regulations don't stipulate penalties, and for cases involving infringement of farmers' rights, it's better to have a law rather than a regulation which can easily be violated when driven by profits," Beijing-based lawyer Zhu Xiaoding told the Global Times.