Law on land compensation

The Ministry of Land and Resources has reportedly released its 2017 legislative work plan, which lists the drafting of a regulation on compensation for rural collective land expropriation as one of its top priorities.

Rural collective land is usually expropriated at a much lower price than urban land and farmers receive little compensation. In some cases, local governments intentionally force down such kind of compensation, which provokes anger and even triggers protests. Thus any accelerated legislative work on rural land acquisition should focus on raising the compensation given to farmers when their collective land is expropriated.

As urbanization has accelerated in recent years, local governments have requisitioned a lot of rural collective land for commercial projects to increase their fiscal revenues. Compared with the swollen fiscal coffers of the governments as a result, the farmers who lost their collective land received little or no monetary benefit.