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Catching land sharks

(China Daily)
Updated: 2008-07-28 11:43

The draft regulations on supervision of land use, which were published on Saturday to solicit public opinion, are a matter of great significance. These need to be seriously reckoned with not only because they will have an impact on the country's efforts to protect its limited arable land but also because they will regulate a supervisory scheme designed to oversee whether local governments at all levels toe the line in land use.

The scheme was initiated in 2006 against the backdrop of rampant land enclosures by local governments in the past few years posing a threat to the central government's goal of keeping the total area of arable land at no less than 120 million hectares. At the same time, land deals had become a major source of corruption and conflicts between local governments and residents.

Land supervision organs directly under the leadership of the Ministry of Land and Resources have proved to be effective in uncovering irregularities in land use since the nine land use supervision bureaus were established in September of 2006.

Local governments are supposed to carry out policies of the central government. And they should also supervise the deals concerning land use. But when they themselves become the biggest beneficiaries of sales of land to real estate developers, it is, of course, hard for them to act on behalf of the central government in protecting arable land from being illegally occupied.

A special establishment independent of local governments is thus an imperative to supervise how they carried out the central government's policies when it comes to arable land protection. Hence, the land use supervision bureaus directly under the auspice of the Ministry of Land and Resources.

The draft regulations have detailed clauses about how land use supervisors should collect information about local governments' involvement in land business deals. They have the power to check local government documents and conduct independent investigations on information provided by tipsters.

Local governments are supposed to cooperate with land supervisors in their investigations, according to the regulations. And supervisors have the responsibility to inform local governments of their irregularities and ask them to mend their mistakes.

These regulations, if they are adopted, will usher in a new supervisory mechanism, which can also be applied in other fields.