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China adopts law on rural land disputes

— PHOTO: Xinhua

Redress mechanism: Farmers in the fields in Wenxian County of Longnan City, Gansu Province.

BEIJING: In the face of increasing land disputes and social unrest in rural areas, China has passed a first of its kind law to facilitate the fair settlement of disputes to maintain “harmony and stability”, the country’s top legislature announced on Saturday.

Under the law, which will go into force in January, arbitration committees will be set up in every county and city “to settle disputes concerning rural land contract management in a timely and just manner,” said the Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress, the country’s highest legislative authority.

Land disputes are among the biggest causes of unrest in rural China. Disputes involving land top the list of grievance petitions filed at the Ministry of Agriculture, making up a little under half of all cases. According to the Chinese government’s statistics, there have been more than 50,000 cases of land disputes in 224 cities between 2003 and March 2008.

This legislation would serve as “an effective guarantee” to protect farmers’ land-rights, said Minister of Agriculture Sun Zhengcai.

The legislation lists a set of guidelines directing village committees and local government officials how to mediate land disputes. Cases that cannot be resolved at the local level would be heard by arbitration committees, who would have to respond to farmers’ complaints within five days.

The committees however would not deal with cases involving farmers going up against the local government — these cases would be settled through the usual process of litigation.

Mr. Sun said the aim of the legislation was to “standardise” the arbitration process in the face of contract disputes that were becoming “more frequent and varied in recent years” and “a factor affecting rural harmony and stability.”

This is the second significant piece of legislation aimed at protecting farmers’ rights the Chinese government has introduced in recent months.

In October, China passed a law allowing farmers to sell their land-use rights for the first time. In China, land is not directly owned by farmers and is leased out by the government on 30 year contracts. The contract system ensured little protection for farmers’ rights, particularly in cases where land was taken up by local government for industrial projects.

The October legislation not only allowed farmers to realise the economic value of their land holdings for the first time, but also placed a limit on the total area of arable land local government could take up for industrial projects.

In the past decade and a half, China has seen considerable erosion in arable land resources as a result of the pressures of industrial development. China currently has 121 million hectares of arable land, down from over 130 million hectares in 1996. According to the government, the country has 800 million farmers.

The last 12 months have seen an increase in land disputes with millions of workers laid off by factory closures returning to farming.

More than 1,00,000 factories have closed down this past year because of the global financial crisis, and millions have migrated back to their home towns looking for employment and considerably increasing the burden on China’s rural economy.

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