Caijing magazine reports on the failures of the new land management law to protect farmers’ interests during the commercial development of farmland. Some reports say that 200 million farmers have been displaced as local governments sell farmland for private development. Despite the new legal requirements that farmers be compensated for repossessed land, in practice the governments sell the land for tens or hundreds of times the compensation price. According to Caijing, “Experts say that in this situation, farmers can only get 5-10 percent of the value of land transfers. The government and real estate developers pocket the lion’s share. In many places, incomes from land transfers can amount to 70-80 percent of local revenues. ” An English translation of the article is here.
Farmers have begun to launch protests and petitions against the unfair confiscation of their land by local governments, as this earlier Washington Post article reports. Commercial development of farmland is also causing a shortage of arable land and depriving farmers of their income. See the Asia Times article from July here.
