(Xinhua)
Updated: 2007-12-10 15:28

To some government officials, they still had an impulse to attract capital and technology by offering investors cheap or even free land resources, a practice that was rife along the east coast in the early period of China's economic reform and opening-up. To others, land yields remain a steady source of fiscal revenue for local governments.

Lured by such immediate local interests, some governments have stealthily restored development zones closed down years ago or acquiesced management of legal development zones to invite business for abolished ones.

Since a national overhaul to shut down inefficient or idle development zones started in 2003, the number of development zones in China and their aggregate land size have shrunk by more than 70 percent to 1,568 and 9,949 square kilometers, respectively, as of the end of 2006.

But rapid urbanization has triggered outrage from some farmers who were not properly compensated for the land they lost. It also led to a drastic decline in the area of land available for cultivation which prompted the government to set a minimum land area of 1.8 billion mu (120 million hectares) to feed its people.

In 2004, domestic policy makers started to track the speed and scale of new land supply in non-agricultural sectors annually to control land supply and boost overall macro-economic control.

Gan Zangchun, deputy director-general of the country's land inspection authority, said land violation had become increasingly discreet in recent years. In the first two years of the policy change (2004-2006), he said many government officials had blatantly approved illegal land use. After two decrees were released in 2004 and 2006, such violations became rarer but cases of circumventing laws and regulations had started to shoot upwards.

National figures on such perpetrations were still being counted. A recent overhaul on the newly-added land for construction in 70 cities, however, revealed nine percent of the requisitioned land had been put onto the market in the name of leasing to avoid prior approval. In one major city, about 67.4 percent of the land provided to local township enterprises was put on the market in this way.

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