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CPPCC members call for rigid protection of cropland
(Xinhua)
Updated: 2004-03-08 16:11
Members of the National Committee of the Chinese People's Political
Consultative Conference (CPPCC), attended a plenary meeting of the annual
session Monday, called for strict policies and measures to be taken for
protecting cultivated land and fundamental interests of farmers, and amending
the Law on Land Management as soon as possible.
Liu Minfu, vice chairman the Central Committee of the Revolutionary Committee
of the Chinese Kuomintang, denounced the willful occupation of farmland in the
name of setting up development zones, in some areas.
He blamed the wrongdoing by some local officials and the existing criteria to
assess the merits of government officials. Leading officials at different levels
should be aware of a scientific concept of development, he said.
Yang Xiangbo, an entrepreneur member from the Hong Kong Special
Administrative Region, also proposed to curb the so-call " development zone
craze" by improving the existing laws and regulations on land requisition.
China now boasts 500-600 development zones, covering a total of 3.55 million
hectares, according to official figures. It was impossible to invest such an
astronomical sum of funds, Yang said, noting that large tracts of land were left
untapped in these so- called development zones. Meanwhile, he added, a lot of
farmers have lost their land and become jobless.
Many local governments have cashed in on the requisition of land from
farmers, due to the big gap between the compensation paid by government to
farmers and prices paid by developers to government for the purchase of the
land, according to Yang.
Even more serious is that in a host of cases, corrupt officials and illegal
businessmen have pocketed the added value from the trading of land-use rights,
said the Hong Kong-based entrepreneur, who used to live in Luhe county, of south
China's Guangdong province, and migrated to Hong Kong in the 1980s.
Hong Fuzeng, vice chairman of Jiu San Society, proposed that great efforts be
made to increase the output of low-yield farmland by relying on science and
technology.
The per-capita average of cropland acreage in China is only less than 0.1
hectares, approximately 45 percent of the world's average, Hong said, noting
that only one third of the country's total cultivated land acreage is
high-yielding and irrigable.
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