{"id":172826,"date":"2014-05-15T15:24:58","date_gmt":"2014-05-15T22:24:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/chinadigitaltimes.net\/?p=172826"},"modified":"2014-05-15T15:24:58","modified_gmt":"2014-05-15T22:24:58","slug":"ongoing-conflict-land-rights-rural-china","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/chinadigitaltimes.net\/2014\/05\/ongoing-conflict-land-rights-rural-china\/","title":{"rendered":"Ongoing Conflict Over Land Rights in Rural China"},"content":{"rendered":"

In late March in Pingdu, Shandong Province,\u00a0arsonists believed to have been hired by a village leader and the boss of a construction company set fire to a tent. Inside slept\u00a0four farmers who were there protesting against the\u00a0seizure of their land;\u00a0one\u00a0farmer died, and two others were seriously injured<\/a>. Coverage of this\u00a0story, one that represents a growing\u00a0trend of\u00a0unrest in rural China over local\u00a0government\u00a0land grabs<\/a>, was quickly ordered off-limits by a\u00a0central government censorship directive<\/a>. In an article published by the Wall Street Journal, Chinese legal scholar Stanley Lubman\u00a0notes that censorship does little to settle the systemic problem that leads to\u00a0situations like the one in Pingdu<\/strong><\/a>:<\/p>\n

Local governments continue to seek income from land transfers because central government funding doesn\u2019t cover their needs. Village residents do not own the land, and they have only the right to farm it for a term of 30 years. When village leaders sell farmland, very often the farmers, who lose the use of their plots, are not properly compensated.<\/p>\n

[…] Protests over land grabs have multiplied in recent years:\u00a0 In one recent\u00a0survey<\/a>\u00a0by rural-development institute Landesa, 43% of villagers said that local officials had taken or tried to take their land, and that on the average government payments to farmers were less than 3% of the market value of the land. It is no wonder that conflicts over land constituted more than 20% of the\u00a0so-called \u201cmass conflicts<\/a>\u201d in 2012.<\/p>\n

[…]\u00a0The problem is compounded by the fast pace of urbanization. As the value of rural land increases, developers have become increasingly interested in purchasing village-owned land\u2014and, as one Wall Street Journal story put it recently, local governments are \u201cgrowing ever more addicted\u201d to revenues from land sales. A\u00a0report<\/a>\u00a0issued by the Ministry of Land and Resources states that local government land sales in 2013 raised 4.2 billion yuan ($682 billion), a 56% increase over last year.<\/p>\n

The Chinese Communist Party has long been aware of the basic problem resulting from the limited rights of farmers over the property on which their livelihood depends.\u00a0 At a major conclave in November, Party leaders promised that\u00a0 \u201cfarmers will be given more property rights,\u201d and in January the Central Committee of the Party and the State Council issued a document on rural policy that stated that farmers will be allowed \u201cto transfer or mortgage\u201d land which they farm under contract with their villages to \u201cfarms, rural cooperatives and agricultural enterprises.\u201d The farmers would remain the legal \u201cowners,\u201d according to\u00a0official media reports<\/a>. […] [Source<\/a><\/strong>]<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Read more about planned reforms that could strengthen land rights<\/a>, land disputes<\/a>, and urbanization in China<\/a>, via CDT.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In late March in Pingdu, Shandong Province,\u00a0arsonists believed to have been hired by a village leader and the boss of a construction company set fire to a tent. Inside slept\u00a0four farmers who were there protesting against the\u00a0seizure of their land;\u00a0one\u00a0farmer died, and two others were seriously injured. Coverage of this\u00a0story, one that represents a growing\u00a0trend […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":985,"featured_media":172829,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[34,14744,14745,14746,100,5],"tags":[15800,53,1163,3851,84,1777,16585,16504,1821,1311],"class_list":["post-172826","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-human-rights","category-level-2-article","category-level-3-article","category-level-4-article","category-politics","category-society","tag-arson","tag-censorship","tag-land-disputes","tag-land-grabs","tag-land-reform","tag-land-rights","tag-land-seizures","tag-pingdu","tag-urban-rural-divide","tag-urbanization","et-has-post-format-content","et_post_format-et-post-format-standard"],"yoast_head":"\nOngoing Conflict Over Land Rights in Rural China<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"http:\/\/chinadigitaltimes.net\/2014\/05\/ongoing-conflict-land-rights-rural-china\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Ongoing Conflict Over Land Rights in Rural China\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"In late March in Pingdu, Shandong Province,\u00a0arsonists believed to have been hired by a village leader and the boss of a construction company set fire to a tent. 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