Anhui takes lead in efficient land use

Editor's note: June 25 marked the 34th National Land Day of China. The theme for this year called for using land resources intensively and efficiently, and protecting arable land. Anhui province, the only provincial-level area designated to pilot new models for more efficient land management, is making headway in this regard.

As the only provincial-level area piloting new models for the more efficient management of land, East China's Anhui has been able to attract a growing number of enterprises to set up their latest projects, according to local officials and businesspeople.

There are several ways of measuring the efficiency of land management, such as by ensuring a project uses the minimum amount of land possible so that the remaining land can be used for other purposes, or reusing or repurposing existing sites instead of building on new land.

China's Ministry of Natural Resources and the Anhui government launched the land-saving and efficiency pilot in October 2022, in the hope that projects in the province could find innovative ways to improve land use and share the experiences with other parts of the country.

Anhui was selected for the pilot program as over the past decade, it has become one of the economic powerhouses of the Yangtze River Delta region, with its GDP surging from 1.2 trillion yuan ($165 billion) in 2010 to 4.7 trillion yuan last year.

The pilot is being carried out in 16 cities in Anhui until the end of 2025.

"Guided by the principle of land conservation, so far we have taken 33 specific measures such as improving planning for land use, exploring new mechanisms for arable land protection and strengthening the redevelopment of inefficient plots of land in urban areas," said Gao Hongjian, director of the provincial government's natural resources department.

Land in China's urban areas is owned by the State, with developers acquiring land for certain periods of time.

During that time, if the development of the acquired land fails to meet certain standards set by the government, it may be identified as "idle land" and can be taken back in exchange for compensation, according to official documents.

The provincial authorities said they have given every plot of urban land an exclusive identification number, which will be used for each plot's full life cycle, and will conduct inspections on them from time to time.

The provincial government evaluates the cities taking part with an annual ranking system based on their performances in areas such as protecting arable land, the intensity of land use in industrial areas and the repurposing of idle land.

Based on the ranking, the top three cities will be awarded special construction projects.

In the 2023 ranking released on June 24, the provincial capital Hefei topped the list.