Land Use Policy 75 (2018) 375–387

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Land Use Policy

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/landusepol

Land-use changes and land policies evolution in China’s urbanization T

processes
⁎
Jing Wanga, , Yifan Linb, Anthony Glendinningc, Yueqing Xud
a
School of Resource and Environmental Sciences, Wuhan University, Wuhan, 430079, Hubei, China
b
College of Urban and Environmental, Peking University, Beijing, 100871, China
c
Department of Sociology, King’s College, University of Aberdeen, UK
d
College of Resource and Environmental Sciences, China Agricultural University, Beijing, 100193, China

A R T I C LE I N FO A B S T R A C T

Keywords: Ensuring food security and sustainable development in China has been threatened by the dilemma of the rapidly
Land-use change growing consumption of the country’s land resources. Research on the linkage between land-use changes and
Land policy evolution land policies in the process of industrialization and urbanization has received increased attention in recent years.
Coordinated land use The present study was conducted to analyze the undergoing dynamics for Chinese land policies and land-use
Food security
changes based on reliable land-use data and to develop a thorough understanding of the historical drivers and
Ecosystem preservation
pathways of land-use changes and China’s deep-seated land issues, as well as the social, political and economic
China
factors involved. The results showed that land-use changes were linked closely to shifts in government land
policies and socio-economic development in China. The evolution of land policies in China was the result of a
path-dependent process, which included the reform of land use system, the economic development environment
as well as a policy-making process that responded to short-term land development. The results also indicated
that there have been considerable achievements regarding the land use system and land management in China.
However, Chinese economic growth overly depended on investments as well as land finance, which were un-
coordinated and unsustainable. The changes in land use were also the outcomes of the land policy failure. There
is still a pressing need to reform land policies for more efficient and effective utilization of limited land resources;
develop a trade-off and synergy among urban development, agricultural production and ecosystem preservation;
differentiate land-use policies; allocate market-oriented land resource; and establish a national macro-control
mechanism in collaboration with a coordinated land-use policy and basic legislation.

1. Introduction
Food security and sustainable development remain the basic
priority of China’s national development policy but are threatened by
the problematic relationship between land for economic development,
agricultural production and ecological protection. Due to economic
development and population growth, China’s land area per capita de-
creased by two and a half times and the amount of land under culti-
vation per capita was also cut in half over a sixty-five-year period. All
land is scarce due to competing demands for its use, and sustainable
land use and coordinated land policies have come under increasing
pressure from industrialization and urbanization and ecological civili-
zation construction. One-eighth of China’s gross land area is under
cultivation, and its diminishing cultivated land must be used more ef-
fectively and efficiently. Valuing and rationally utilizing every inch of
land and steadfastly protecting cultivated land and natural ecosystems
are very significant in order for China to push forward with sustainable
industrialization and urbanization.
The sustainability of land utilization is a key issue in the process of a
nation’s industrialization and urbanization in terms of economic power,
food provision, land conservation and regional development (Schlager
and Ostrom, 1992; Spalding, 2017; Mertz and Merens, 2017; Wang
et al., 2018a). Research on the relationship between land-use change
and land policies has received increased attention in recent years. Many
studies have focused on Chinese economic reform and development of
urban land-use policies, land-use markets and operation of land-leasing
systems (Tang, 1989; Liu and Yang, 1990; Yeh and Wu, 1996; Zhang,
1997; Ye, 2007; Liu et al., 2017). Siciliano (2012) studied impacts of
urbanization and socio-economic development on agriculture and rural
communities in China. Some researchers studied on current land-use
policies and drivers for land-use changes and their related policy
changes, focused the conversion of land to non-agricultural uses (Ding,

⁎
Corresponding author.
E-mail addresses: wjing0162@126.com, wangjing-whu@whu.edu.cn (J. Wang).

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.landusepol.2018.04.011
Received 24 October 2015; Received in revised form 21 February 2018; Accepted 5 April 2018
Available online 09 April 2018
0264-8377/ © 2018 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
J. Wang et al.
2003; Lin and Ho, 2003; Ho and Lin, 2004; Feng et al., 2005; Wang
et al., 2012; Wang et al., 2018b), and impacts of endogenous socio-
ecological forces or exogenous socio-economic factors on land-use
transitions (Lambin and Meyfroidt, 2010). Some issues related to the
land-use systems and land policies, such as the land allocation system
and its relationship to cultivated land protection (Lichtenberg and Ding,
2008), the land requisition system reform and farmers’ compensation
policy (MLR, 2003), and conflicts between the land allocation system
and agricultural land tenure policy (Wang et al., 2010), were discussed.
The underlying concern regards uneven regional development, in-
security of ecosystem, and growing inequities between China’s dimin-
ishing rural and increasing urban populations. From perspective of food
security and cultivated land protection, Wu et al. (2017) analyzed and
pictured Chinese future cultivated land protection policies focusing on
dynamic balance system and basic farmland zoning. Li et al. (2009)
studied the land administration system for cultivated land protection.
Deng and colleagues (2006) have been skeptical regarding threats to
national food security caused by the conversion of cultivated land to
urban use using land-use data from satellite images between 1986 and
2000. They argue that such losses were and would continue to be ba-
lanced by increased productivity under agricultural modernization.
From perspective of urbanization and ecological protection, relation-
ships between urbanization and cultivated land loss/degradation (Cai,
1990; Yang and Li, 2000; Tan et al., 2005; Chen, 2007), the role of
human activities on changes in ecological land (Wang et al., 2018a,
2018b), and land intensive use and land pollution (Hill, 1994; Cao and
Guan, 2007; Li et al., 2017), have been studied.
Moreover, from the viewpoint of the linkages between land policies
and land-use change, Mertz and Merens (2017) reviewed the driving
forces and their outcomes behind land sparing or land sharing policies
and concluded that land sparing is the dominant land policy paradigm
in developing countries. Spalding (2017) explored the evolution of land
tenure and land-use change and discussed the linkages between land-
use management and land-use change at the local level in Panama.
Bennett et al. (2018) concluded that the link between oil palm expan-
sion and land rights at both the household and village levels in the
study area was not a direct causal relationship. Liu et al. (2017) re-
viewed the development of China’s cultivated land protection policies
in the period following China’s reform and liberalization but there was
a lack of thorough explanations concerning why changes in cultivated
land potentially conflicted with the legally guaranteed cultivated land
policy. However, research into Chinese land-use changes and deep land
issues and their links to land policies from the perspective of co-
ordination in industrialization and agricultural modernization and
ecological preservation has been hindered by an absence of reliable
detail land-use data and a lack of a thorough understanding of the
historical drivers and pathways of land-use changes and ensuing land
policies and management regimes. Little is known about the linkages
between land policies and land-use change (Jepsen et al., 2015;
Spalding, 2017), and there are few discussions about solutions to land-
use issues regarding the uneven and uncoordinated development that
have accompanied China’s rapid economic development and moder-
nization from the perspective of land-use strategy.
To date, land policies that have accompanied China’s rapid eco-
nomic development and modernization have been somewhat un-
sustainable in certain periods. The underlying concern regards conflicts
between economic development and agricultural production and eco-
logical protection, uneven regional development, and growing in-
equities between rural and urban areas. Developing effective land po-
licies is crucial to addressing China’s national and regional development
and sustainability goals. The present study was conducted to analyze
the undergoing dynamics for Chinese land policies and land-use
changes and to discuss the pathways between land policies and land-use
changes in the context of economic development and urbanization
drivers and outcomes. In addition, we propose transformations of land-
use policies accompanied by rapid economic development and
376
Land Use Policy 75 (2018) 375–387
urbanization. This study is based on a longer-term view framed by an
understanding of the country’s land-use changes and policies that have
occurred over different periods in Chinese urbanization processes, using
reliable surveyed land data.
2. Materials and methods
Details on land-use changes were obtained from official sources that
included the first national land-use survey by the former China State
Land Administration Bureau (CSLAB) in the mid-1990s (CSLAB, 1996;
Ma, 2000; Liu, 2000), the second national land-use survey by the
Ministry of Land and Resources (MLR) in 2009, and the annual land-use
change surveys carried out by the MLR and published as the ‘Com-
prehensive Statistics Annals of Land and Resources’. Those data were
supplemented by other various data published by the China State Sta-
tistics Bureau (CSSB) that included the “China Statistics Yearbook” and
“New China’s 55 Years Compilation of Statistical Data” (CSSB, 1995).
The data on cultivated land from 1978 to 1995 were extrapolated from
the net increase (or decrease) of cultivated land according to the sta-
tistical data, and the other data on land use in 1978 and 1995 were
cited from “New China’s 50 Years 1949–1999” published by the China
State Statistics Bureau (CSSB, 2000). The social and economic data
from 1949 to 1999 were cited from “New China’s 50 Years 1949–1999”.
The data from 2000 to 2015 were cited from the “China Statistics
Yearbook”, which was also published by the China State Statistics Bu-
reau (CSSB, 2000–2015).
The degree of land use was calculated using a land-use degree model
(Liu, 1992):
n
Li = 100 × ∑ (Ai × Pi )
i=1 (1)
where Li is the degree of land-use type i, Ai represents the graded index
of land-use type i, Pi represents the percentage of land-use type i area to
the total land area of the region, and Li value is distributed between
100–400. The degree of land use represents the level of land intensive
use to some extent. The degree of developed land intensive use was
evaluated through a comprehensive model of multi-index comprising
the following factors: land investment intensity, land-use level, land-use
efficiency and sustainable land-use status. The factor of land investment
intensity included three indicators: fixed investment per square kilo-
meter of land, fiscal expenditure per square kilometer of land, and road
density. The factor of land-use level was composed of three indicators:
the area of developed land per capita, the developed land-use rate, and
degree of land use. The factor of land-use efficiency was composed of
two indicators: the primary, secondary and tertiary industrial GDPs per
square kilometer of land as well as the total industrial production value
per square kilometer of land. The factor of sustainable land-use status
was composed of two indicators: the area of public green space per
capita and urban afforestation coverage. The weights of the evaluation
factors and indicator were obtained using the expert scoring method.
The comprehensive model of multi-index can be expressed as:
m n
⎧ ⎫
S= ∑ wi × ∑ [wj × Yj ] ⎬
⎨ j=1
,
i=1 ⎩ ⎭ (2)
where S is the degree of developed land intensive use, wi represents the
weight of evaluation factor i, m represents the number of evaluation
factors, wj represents the weight of evaluation indicator j, n represents
the number of evaluation factors, and Yj represents the value of the
evaluation indicator j.
J. Wang et al. Land Use Policy 75 (2018) 375–387

Table 1 Table 2
Land-use status in China in the period of 1996–2015. The degrees of land use, rates of land under cultivation, rates of developed land-
use and degrees of developed land intensive use by provinces in 2015.
Land-use types 1996 (%) 2008 (%) 2009 (%) 2015 (%) Cumulative
changes in Province Degree of Rate of land Rate of Degree of
1996-2008 and land use under developed developed land
2009–2015(%) cultivation (%) land use (%) intensive use

Cultivated land 13.68 12.80 14.28 14.24 −0.92 Beijing 256.63 13.37 21.42 0.45
Garden land 1.05 1.24 1.56 1.51 0.13 Tianjin 266.15 36.66 31.53 0.47
Forestry land 23.94 24.83 26.79 26.69 0.79 Hebei 252.70 34.60 12.30 0.29
Grassland 27.99 27.54 30.31 30.22 −0.54 Shanxi 233.32 25.90 7.40 0.24
Residential and 2.52 2.83 3.03 3.32 0.60 Inner Mongolia 192.62 8.06 1.68 0.25
industrial Liaoning 252.06 33.54 11.29 0.27
land Jilin 242.10 36.61 6.16 0.20
Transportation 0.58 0.67 0.84 0.92 0.18 Heilongjiang 234.97 35.03 4.01 0.14
Water area and 4.09 4.03 3.94 3.91 −0.09 Shanghai 285.18 22.68 38.10 0.60
wetlands Jiangsu 264.32 42.92 21.94 0.44
Zhejiang 237.73 18.74 11.74 0.43
Anhui 257.25 41.91 14.08 0.27
3. Results Fujian 221.62 10.78 6.74 0.33
Jiangxi 225.55 18.47 7.20 0.26
Shandong 269.71 48.20 18.95 0.35
3.1. Land use situation Henan 271.60 48.93 16.20 0.21
Hubei 232.12 28.26 8.63 0.26
Table 1 lists the percentage of total land resources for each land-use Hunan 226.44 19.59 7.73 0.26
Guangdong 229.81 14.56 10.80 0.30
type in 1996 from the first national land-use survey, in 2009 from the
Guangxi 220.03 18.53 5.02 0.22
second national land-use survey, and in annual change surveys. The Hainan 253.52 20.63 9.13 0.33
analysis on land-use changes was divided into two periods (1996–2008 Chongqing 236.72 29.51 8.28 0.33
and 2019–2015) due to the differences between the first and the second Sichuan 210.96 13.85 3.90 0.21
national land surveys. One can see that cultivated land, grassland, and Guizhou 220.99 25.77 4.16 0.19
Yunnan 214.51 16.20 3.14 0.16
water area and wetland cumulatively decreased by 0.92%, 0.54%, and
Tibet 187.51 0.37 0.14 0.32
0.09% in the two periods, respectively. In the above periods, forestry Shaanxi 229.74 19.43 5.14 0.26
land, transportation land, and residential and industrial land con- Gansu 179.75 12.62 2.43 0.13
tinuously increased. There were considerable geographic variations in Qinghai 170.42 0.84 0.46 0.30
Ningxia 223.53 24.86 6.67 0.28
land-use changes due to differences in the natural environments, po-
Xinjiang 145.99 3.18 1.00 0.25
pulation densities, and levels of economic development (Wang et al., China 200.59 14.24 4.24
2018a).
The degree of land use in the provinces (autonomous regions and
municipalities) and regions was calculated using the land-use degree Heilongjiang, Yunnan and Guizhou provinces. This also indicated that
model. Spatial differences in areas with a higher degree of land use the level of economic development was an important impacting factor
were significant. The degree of land use was higher in Tianjin, on the degrees of developed land intensive use (Wang et al., 2018b).
Shanghai, Jiangsu and Shandong in eastern developed regions
(Table 2). The value for the Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region was
3.2. Land use corresponding to different periods of economic development
the lowest. The distribution of the land-use degree was closely related
and urbanization
to that of the regional natural environment and socio-economic and
technological conditions.
Fig. 1 indicates an overview of changing urbanization level and
The rate of land under cultivation reflects the amount of land for
gross domestic product (GDP) in different socio-economic development
planting and is generally calculated as the percentage of cultivated land
periods over the past sixty-five years. The year 1978/1979 marked the
area to total land area. The rate of developed land-use reflects the
beginning of China’s population urbanization with the reform and
proportion of areas for residential, industrial and mineral land and
opening up. Its growth has not changed much before until the mid-
transportation land to total land area. The rate of land under cultivation
1980s. Fig. 2 provides an overview of changing amounts of cultivated
was higher in Henan, Shandong, Jiangsu and Anhui and exceeded 40%,
land under use for agricultural production since 1978 as set against the
which was far more than the national average (Table 2). On the con-
increasing size of China’s urban and economic development, as China
trary, it was lower in the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region, the
has moved away from an agrarian society. Fig. 3 illustrates China’s
Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region, Qinghai Province and the Tibet
changing patterns of land use from 1978 to 2015. The year 1985/1986
Autonomous Region. In those regions most of land resources are un-
marked the beginning of China’s first economic ‘soft-landing’ that was
suitable for farming mainly because of the complex topographies and
intended to rein back unfettered growth in the initial period after the
weather conditions. Terrain, weather conditions and other natural
reform and marketization of the economy. The year 1996/1997 marked
factors form disadvantageous basic conditions for land use. The regions
the beginning of administrative changes that required approved, in-
with high rates of land under cultivation and developed land use were
tegrated land-use planning (LUP) at the national and regional (pro-
concentrated in the coastal developed areas in China. The geographic
vinces, municipalities and autonomous regions), and county levels, and
differentiations of the rates of land under cultivation and developed
a shift in development policy to nationwide regional industrial and pro-
land use were in accordance with that of regional economic develop-
urbanization programs as opposed to the previous development of lo-
ment level.
cally based town and village enterprises that had characterized the
The spatial differences in the degree of developed land intensive use
initial wave of reform. The years for which various data are provided in
were significant in China. The degrees of developed land intensive use
Figs. 2 and 3, i.e., 1978, 1985, 1990, and 1996–2015, corresponding to
varied from 0.1295 and 0.5956 and mainly decreased from east to west
different periods of political, social and economic development and
(Table 2). The highest values were in Shanghai, Tianjin, Beijing,
urbanization. The urbanization level only exceeded 50 percent after
Jiangsu, and Zhejiang provinces, whereas the lowest were in Gansu,
2010. In the study, Changes in land use and evolution of land polices

377
J. Wang et al. Land Use Policy 75 (2018) 375–387

Fig. 1. Growth in China’s urbanization and GDP in different economic development periods from 1949 to 2015.

framed by an understanding of the changes that have occurred over
Chinese different periods were analyzed, focusing on the periods of
China’s urbanization since 1978, especially from 1996 to 2015.
China’s different periods of political, social and economic develop-
ment and urbanization are presented in Table 3. Foreign direct in-
vestment became appreciable only after 1991/1992 and has run at
higher levels since then. The year 2002/2003 marked adjustments for
Chinese land policies, corresponding to a large change in land use that
resulted from rapid economic development and urbanization. The
period after 2008/2009 represents China’s adjustments to the global
economic slowdown and its responses to reduced export demands for its
products. The period from 2009 to 2015 represents China’s adjustments
to the global financial crisis and its responses to adjustments in in-
dustrial structures and the raising of funds for urbanization and urban
construction. China’s land-use policies have been the product of the
political, economic and social conditions in the different periods of
modernization and national development since 1978, as delineated in
Table 3. Land-use changes are linked closely to shifts in government
land policies and socio-economic development (Papanastasis et al.,
2015; Huang et al., 2018).
3.3. Land-use changes and the evolution of land policies in the period of
opening up and economic reform (1979–1991)
The opening up and reformation of China’s economic system was
marked by two key changes of land policies in the countryside after
1978. First, the two-tier household responsibility system was in-
troduced whereby, collectives continued to own farmland but land-use
contracts were extended to individual farm households. The new system
required farmers to meet quotas for the collective, although they were
also able to produce for the market. Marketization of trade in most
agriculture and consumer products was in place by the mid-1980s. The
reform of the rural land-use system was reflected by the marked in-
crease in agricultural output and productivity from the two-tier
household responsibility system and the marketization trade mode,
while cultivated land decreased largely due to the rapid growth of town
and village enterprises (Figs. 2 and 4). Therefore, the area of cultivated
land has been decreasing significantly from a historical peak in 1978 by
1.35 million hectares in the period of 1978–1985, with up to 524
thousand hectares for developed land use. The second key change was
that town and village enterprises were established to move labor away
from moribund farm collectives to work in new industries. These were
established in the locality to prevent mass rural-urban migration to the

Fig. 2. Summary of land policies and changing GDP, forest coverage, area of cultivated land, and the proportion of primary industry in China from 1978 to 2015.
Note: two stages (1996–2008 and 2009–2012) was distinguished due to differences in technologies, means, data sources, and precision between the first national land
survey (1996) and the second national land survey (2009). Similar was in Figs. 3–5, Figs. 8, and 9.

378
J. Wang et al. Land Use Policy 75 (2018) 375–387

Fig. 3. Changing areas of residential and industrial land, transportation land, grassland and garden land in China from 1978 to 2015.

cities. As a result of both the two-tier household responsibility system
and the town and village enterprises initiatives, cultivated land was in
high demand for agricultural production and economic growth. How-
ever, at the same time, it was also increasingly occupied in a haphazard
fashion for local entrepreneurial development. New town and village
enterprises occupied almost one million hectares of cultivated land. The
following reform meant that almost 4.30 million hectares of that total
amount of land area were used for new town and village enterprises,
from 1978 to 1985, though agricultural output and productivity in-
creasing. The annual growth rates of total grain output and grain yield
increased by 4.90% and 4.10% in the same periods, respectively.
To prevent uncontrolled land use, a series of policies of strict cul-
tivated land conservation were implemented (Land Management Law
(1986), the land-use quota for annual plan (1987), etc.), and adminis-
trative restrictions on the uncompensated and unlimited duration of
land use were introduced by the mid-1980s (SCNPC, 1998). Under a
policy of strict cultivated land conservation, fixed asset investment and
occupation of cultivated land for urban development slowed annually
during the country’s ‘soft-landing’ to rein in economic growth and price
inflation between 1986 and 1991. These policies of strict cultivated
land conservation had better effects. The results indicated that the de-
creased area of cultivated land was down to 1.19 million hectares, and
the area used for new town and village enterprises decreased to 2.04
million hectares from 1986 to 1990, compared to the period of
1978–1985 (Fig. 4). The income divide between China’s rural and
urban populations was at its lowest point due to the effects of the initial
period of opening up and reform in the countryside in the first half of
the 1980s, but thereafter, rural and urban incomes increasingly di-
verged (Ravallion and Chen, 2004). In this period, the growth of town
and village enterprises, as the main driving force of industrialization,
had no pressure on Chinese urbanization. These enterprises were almost
all located in small towns or rural areas, and farmers who did not leave
home were the major labor force. Therefore, the industrialization
growth was far higher than that of urbanization, but it can also be said
that the urbanization lagged behind industrialization.
On the other hand, the outflow of farm labor and losses of cultivated
land due to the widespread development of town and village enterprises
have slowed the output growth since 1985. In the meantime, the pro-
portion of primary industries significantly decreased, while the area of
garden land largely increased due to agricultural adjustment driven by
economic interest. However, the slowdown of output growth did not
greatly affect grain output in the period since 1985 (Figs. 2–5). Eco-
nomic modeling showed that in the period after the opening up and
reform from 1978 up to 1985, increased agricultural productivity due
to the de-collectivization of farming by means of the two-tier household
responsibility system (an indication of the reform of the rural land-use
system) on its own accounted for approximately 50% of grain output
growth (Lin, 1992). Changes to market and state procurement prices for
grains also led to increased farm inputs, especially of chemical fertili-
zers, which explained a further growth of grain output by 40%. The
market was able to compensate for reduced state government pro-
curement prices that were lower in the second half of the 1980s. Na-
tional food security is not only the significant basis of economic de-
velopment and social stability but also a necessary safeguard for the
political independence of China.
3.4. Land-use changes and the evolution of land policies in the initial and
mid-term of socialist market-oriented economy (1992–2008)
The initial and middle period of the ‘socialist market-oriented
economy’ after 1991 observed the development of industrial zones and
urban real estate in the 1990s. However, the development of special

Table 3
China’s changing land-use policies from 1978 to 2015.
Years Periods Land-use policies Issues

1978–1991 Opening up and economic reform Two-tier household responsibility system Initial productivity but effect development of town and village
Local entrepreneurship enterprises
1992–2002 Initial period of the socialist market- Farmland protection and land-use planning Conflict over farmland protection and land development
oriented economy Focus on large state firms rather
Urbanization and regional development
2003–2008 Mid-term of the socialist market-oriented Regulating land markets, use-rights and property Uneven rural-urban and regional social and economic
economy law development
2009–now Socialist market-oriented economy Intensive land use under construction of ecological Conflict over cultivated land conversion and land development
civilization, and ecological protection
Regulating land markets, use-rights and property Uneven rural-urban and regional social and economic
development

379
J. Wang et al.
Fig. 4. Summary of land policies and changing cultivated land for developed land use and agricultural structure adjustment, and abandoned cultivated land from
1985 to 2015.
economic zones was retained, and their particular role within a market
economy with Chinese characteristics was clarified only later in 1992
by the original architect of the opening up and reform, Comrade Deng
Xiaoping. Foreign direct investment increased rapidly from 1991 to
1996. Meanwhile, the reform of the tax distribution system began after
1993. The central government concentrated a large amount of financial
revenue, and the proportion of local financial revenue had been in a
sharp fall. The proportion of central and local financial revenue
changed from 22:78 in 1993 to 56:44 in 1994. However, local gov-
ernments undertook most of the expenditure responsibility of local
public products. Therefore, local governments prioritized collective
land conversions for industrial, infrastructure and residential uses in-
stead of the maintaining cultivated land resources. The acquisition of
land leasing payments became the main method of land use by local
governments. Farmers’ expropriated cultivated lands were compen-
sated based on the output value of the cultivated land and were only
equivalent to 6 to 10 times of the annual output value of cultivated land
by the local government. On the other hand, the collective cultivated
land in rural areas was obtained from farmers at low prices and was
sold in the market through bidding, auction, listing, etc., at high prices
by land reservation operations. ‘Low-cost’ lands for industrial zones and
urban construction provided major incentives for changing designated
Fig. 5. China’s land under cultivation and grain production from 1980 to 2015.
380
Land Use Policy 75 (2018) 375–387
land uses. The returns to local governments from the sale of urban land-
use rights to developers were considerable and boosted regional eco-
nomic development. With the increasing reform of the land-use system,
the amounts of compensated transfer lands were obviously expanded.
The effect of the reform for the land-use system was significant and the
induced land value gradually was highlighted. As shown in Figs. 6 and
7, land leasing payments increased from 649 billion RMB Yuan in 1994
to 9600 billion RMB Yuan in 2008, while urbanization levels increased
from 28.5 to 45.7 in this period. According to data from the Ministry of
Land and Resources, the amount of expropriated land in the period
from 2003 to 2005 accounted for 850 thousand hectares, and the
average land compensation fee paid to collectives, not directly to farm
households, was only 0.52 million RMB Yuan per hectare (that was the
nominal price paid to local authorities for ownership through land-use
conversion). However, the amount of urban land transferred by the
local authorities on the ‘urban-land-market’ during the same period was
540 thousand hectares, with an average lease of 3.25 million RMB Yuan
per hectare (that was the price charged by local authorities to devel-
opers for urban land-use rights for 40–50 years). Land resources play a
significant role in providing accumulation of urbanization.
Under the above circumstances, the overdevelopment of real estate
and economic zones in 1991/1992 has led to large-scale and
J. Wang et al.
Fig. 6. Growth in urbanization level and Changing amounts of fixed assets investment and urban built-up in China from 1986 to 2015.
Fig. 7. Changing amounts of local fiscal revenue and land leasing payment, and growth in ratio of land leasing to local revenue in China from 1994 to 2014.
widespread land development. ‘Low-cost’ lands for industrial zones and
urban construction have provided major incentives for changing pre-
vious farmland, grassland, forest, and wetlands. Fig. 4 shows that there
was a second decreasing peak period of cultivated land from 1992 to
1997 (the first one in 1958–1960 was due to the “Great Leap Forward”).
Therefore, Regulation of Basic Cultivated Land Protection, Requisition-
compensation Equilibrium of Cultivated Land, and Strict Cultivated Land
Protection and Developed Land Control were sequentially implemented,
and Notice about the Enhancement of Requisition-Compensation of Culti-
vated Land was officially proposed in 1997.1 Monitoring urban land-use
changes using remote sensing images since 1999 by the MLR, which
had been established in 1998, showed the extent of losses and illegal
land use. The Land Administration Law of the PRC was revised in 1998 to
strictly preserve cultivated land and control developed land. In addi-
tion, a policy of Equilibrium of Requisition-Compensation of Cultivated
Land operated from 1999 after the introduction of the PRC’s revised
Land Administration Law (LAL) and new National Land-use Planning
(NLUP) (SCNPC, 1998).2 Equilibrium policy required that any loss of
cultivated land to other uses must be compensated by the generation of
1
Developed land use became more efficient and secured compared to the planned-
economy period.
2
The policy was re-emphasized as guidance for ‘Evaluating Method on the Equilibrium
Requisition-Compensation of Cultivated Land’ in 2006 and 2007. In response to global
economic slowdown policy changed to endorse a ‘double-maintenance’ strategy of
‘Maintain both Economic Development and Land Resources Conservation’ or ‘Maintain
both Development Rate and Red Line’ in 2008.
381
Land Use Policy 75 (2018) 375–387
a similar area of land from other land-use types. Agencies using and
taking lands were responsible for replacement or for paying state
agencies to generate land. That meant the cultivated land for replace-
ment had to be generated through land development, land consolida-
tion and land reclamation schemes to maintain a dynamic balance, as
the policy allowed no net increase of developed land on cultivated land.
The trends of decreasing cultivated land and increasing urban built-up
land were controlled from 1998 to 2001 (Figs. 4 and 6). The policies
especially focused on protecting the total amount of cultivated land.
However, conflicts between the imperatives of development and culti-
vated land protection only intensified. A policy target of 128 million
hectares of cultivated land and a target for the total area of ‘basic’
(higher-quality) cultivated land to remain at 80 percent in every pro-
vince were agreed upon as the preservation goal in the National Land-
use Planning (NLUP) for 1997–2010, but the amount of 128 million
hectares was already less than that by 2001. The total area of cultivated
land resources stood at 128.24 million hectares in 2000. As the long-
term target for cultivated land preservation, the minimum ‘red-line’
amount was set to 120 million hectares (or 1.8 billion Mu) in the PRC’s
‘Eleventh Five-Year Plan’ in 2010. The amount of land designated for
industrial, residential, mineral exploitation and other urban uses in-
creased by almost three million hectares from 1996 to 2008, which
represented an increase of one-eighth over the total area of developed
land in 1996.3 That increase explained why changes in land use
3
The net loss of cultivated land was greater than three million hectares because of
J. Wang et al.
Fig. 8. Changing areas of cultivated land to forestry land and to grassland by ecological restoration in China from 1996 to 2015.
conflicted with the legally guaranteed land policy and the efficiency of
land-use planning.
In the period between 1996 and 2008, the national strategy shifted
to modernization development expressed by large-scale industrializa-
tion and pro-urbanization programs based on land capitalization.
Conflicts between competing interests for limited land resources be-
came a major issue across the country and intensified again, as in-
dicated by the beginning of the third decreasing peak period of culti-
vated land since 2001. The overdevelopment of real estate and
economic zones in 2003/2004 was addressed by the interceding policy
in which a moratorium was declared on all land conversions for six
months from May 2004 (Urgent Notice on Further Regulating Land Market
and Strictly Controlling Land Administration, promulgated by the State
Council of the PRC, 30 April 2004). The State Council released Decisions
of the State Council on Deepening Reform and Tightening Land Management
in October 2004 to counter acts of unlawful appropriation and misuse
of cultivated land. An additional concern was the ‘uneven’ regional
distribution of development and losses of cultivated lands (Wang et al.,
2012). This process was based on the idea that the protection policy-
making was in response to the peak of decreasing cultivated land, while
also being strongly influenced by traditional ideologies around the
focus on land-use quotas linked to planned economic models.
Besides the policies for cultivated land preservation, China’s gov-
ernment began to pay attention to sustainability development issues.
Natural ecosystem preservation was the “blind spot” in bygone rural
land management and land policy decision-making. Policies for ecolo-
gical construction had significant impacts on changes in forestry land
and grassland in the period. The grain for green program which was
officially proposed by Several Opinions on Further Improving the Pilot
Project of grain for green in the year of 2000, resulted in the large-scale
ecological restoration afforestation for forested area, particularly in the
central and western regions. The area of forestry lands increased during
1996–2008, with the peak period of afforestation taking place during
2000–2004 due to the policy of suspending Grain for Green after 2005
(Fig. 8). In contrast, there were only a few areas of cultivated land that
were restored to grasslands. Fig. 2 also indicates a significant decrease
of grassland in the process of urbanization: the decreased natural
grassland amounted to 5.44 million hectares in the period from 1996-
(footnote continued)
increases in developed, garden and orchard land in the countryside due to the demands of
China’s changing food markets, for example growth of milk and fruit production.
382
Land Use Policy 75 (2018) 375–387
2008.
China’s land-use modes were characterized by inefficiency and
waste in those years. Industrial and urban development relied on ac-
quiring new lands, whereas existing lands remained under-used. A
survey by the MLR estimated that there were approximately 55 thou-
sand hectares of ‘vacant’ urban land (not allocated), 70 thousand hec-
tares of ‘idle’ urban land (allocated but not in use) and 135 thousand
hectares of ‘new’ urban land (approved but not yet in use) in 2004. This
amounted to more than 260 thousand hectares and represented eight
percent of the nation’s total urban developed land. The survey esti-
mated that urban developed land not actually in use represented as
much as one-fourth of the built-up areas of cities. At the time of the
survey, developed land in the countryside was being under-utilized. For
example, the amount of developed land per capita in rural areas was
fifty percent above the standard value of 150 square-meters per capita
as a whole. Rural developed land was being under-used principally
because of the scale of socio-economic development that led to mass
rural-urban migration and that produced the phenomenon of the ‘hol-
lowed-out’ village (Long et al., 2012). Ten to fifteen percent of devel-
oped village land and individual farm households laid empty in 2004.
For cultivated land use in the countryside, more than 100 million
hectares had been abandoned or had become less intensively used due
to labor migration. The areas of cultivated land abandoned and de-
stroyed by disasters were up to 1.14 million hectares and 394.5 thou-
sand hectares in the periods of 1986–1996 and 2000–2008, respectively
(Fig. 4).
On the other hand, from the agricultural production viewpoint,
national food security is still the significant basis of economic devel-
opment and social stability. There were further concerns about falling
productivity between 1997 and 2002 (Li et al., 2005). In the south of
China, the traditional double-season cropping rice was changed to
single-season rice, directly resulting in the reduction of the rice-sown
area, and grain yield was also reduced, resulting in a significant decline
in grain production in the same period. Furthermore, land-use changes
based on MLR land-use surveys indicated that the cultivated land oc-
cupied by other land was running at a historical high in 2002–2004
(Wang et al., 2012). China’s government and subsequent policy re-
sponses were to focus on changes to the rural land-use regime to
maintain the grain supply and increase farmers’ incomes (Dean and
Damm-Luhr, 2010; Wang et al., 2012). By the end of 2008, the State
Council and Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party pro-
posed prohibiting the conversion of agricultural land, extending the
J. Wang et al.
terms of farmers’ contractual land-use rights and building up markets to
promote trade in rural land-use rights. To a certain extent, these polices
mobilized farmers and local governments to develop grain production,
increase investment on cultivated land and strengthen the enthusiasm
of agricultural infrastructure construction. The improvement of culti-
vated land quality and agricultural productivity promoted the growth
of grain production from 2005. However, Aubert’s critical re-ex-
amination of China’s changing production and consumption patterns
for grains between 1985 and 2005 suggested that the ‘grain problem’
was a ‘statistical artifact’ in the final analysis (Aubert, 2008). According
to Zhou (2010), national grain reserves to ensure China’s food security
have been in excess of 30 percent for much of the period since the
economic reform and development, unlike the previous food insecurity
during the period of the centrally planned economy, when the nation’s
reserve stock of grain was consistently below the ten percent level and
thus had only one month of reserve supply. Zhou and colleagues (2010)
concluded that future threats to China’s food security were not only
related to environmental degradation and loss of cultivated land but
also to social divisions brought about by the uneven character of the
current national economic development process.
3.5. Land-use changes and the evolution of land policies in the period of
socialist market-oriented economy (2009–now)
In the period of the socialist market-oriented economy, under the
condition of scarce land resources and low efficiency of land use, the
dilemma of the rapidly growing consumption of resources has become
increasingly conspicuous. The limited land resources are unable to meet
various demands, resulting in the intensified conflicts between urban
construction and rural development, industrial development and cul-
tivated land conservation, and the unbalanced spatial patterns of
agricultural, urban and ecological land use. The rapid industrialization
in this period resulted in an increase in residential, industrial and
mining lands and pushed the growth rate from 3.03% to 3.32% of the
total area. The urbanization process was accelerated by a 7.7% growth
rate of the non-agricultural population. The rapid growth in urbaniza-
tion resulted in a decrease in cultivated land, forestry land, grassland,
and wetlands (Figs. 2 and 3), as well as the decreased cultivated land
for developed land use at a high level in this period (Fig. 4). In the same
period, the proportion of primary industry on the national economy as a
whole decreased by 1.6%, while the agricultural land decreased by
0.2%, which indicated the optimization and upgrading of the industrial
structure. The development of the secondary and tertiary industries
greatly promoted the entire national economy and affected the de-
mands of land use, which in turn resulted in the adjustment of agri-
cultural structures and the increases in developed land and fallow
cultivated land. Local governments have a monopoly on use-rights
markets, and after 2008, they also secured loans on land assets in efforts
to maintain performance. After the global financial crisis, land became
the most effective guarantee for local governments to raise funds for
urbanization and urban construction. Land leasing payments, land-re-
lated taxes and land mortgages together constitute an important source
of local fiscal revenue. Since 2000, the increase in the rate of urban
developed land was over 0.2 million hectares per annum, twice that of
the 1990s. The growth rate of land under development was 5 percent,
whereas the annual growth of the urban population was only 3.5 per-
cent. By 2009, the proportion of land leasing payments within the total
fiscal revenue of local governments had increased to well over 40
percent from under 10 percent in 1999. More importantly, land mort-
gages replaced land leasing payments as the main source of local urban
construction funds. According to the statistics, the percentage of land
mortgages to total mortgages increased from 4.94% in 2008 to 9.29% in
2012 in China. Therefore, conflicting policies were in operation. The
national government’s strategy was to manage and control land con-
versions through the MLR, although some local governments were fi-
nancing urbanization development through the release of capital from
383
Land Use Policy 75 (2018) 375–387
the inefficient conversion of rural land for urban use.
Moreover, China is still facing the pressure of food security. The
population continues to increase and the area of cultivated land con-
tinues to decrease. The impacts of industrialization and urbanization as
the main threats to cultivated land are also the key drivers of China’s
changing food demands and patterns of food consumption specifically
due to increasing incomes and the numbers of city dwellers. The per
capita consumption of grain was reduced, but indirect consumption of
grain increases, such as meat/eggs/milk and other consumption, has
been rising. Environmental pollution has led to a serious decline in food
quality as a whole. It is still important to improve cultivated land
quality and agricultural productivity and food security for land man-
agement (Wu et al., 2017).
Therefore, the MLR had the Regulation of land intensive use in place
to improve land-use efficiency through making the best of utilization
for existing developed land and land comprehensive improvement in
2014. The Central Committee of the Communist Party of China (CPC)
and the State Council officially issued the National Plan on New
Urbanization for the implementation of a new form of urbanization to
improve the urbanization quality in 2014, and promulgated the
Opinions on Accelerating the Construction of Ecological Civilization in 2015
for optimizing land spatial pattern and strengthening the protection of
natural ecosystems. The preservation ideology has played a critical role
in the current discourse of the reform of the Requisition-compensation of
Cultivated Land policy and the renaissance of ecological preservation
policies. The annually increased developed land and urban built-up
land in 2014–2015 was only 37.4 and 5.0 million hectares, significantly
less than the average of 46.4 and 22.79 million hectares, respectively
(Figs. 3 and 6). Moreover, the total area of cultivated land increased
from 2014 to 2015 (Fig. 2). The focus of national ecological construc-
tion has shifted to projects of land consolidation and land compre-
hensive improvement since 2009; the areas of land comprehensive
improvement and increased cultivated land by land consolidation are
increasing (Fig. 9).
In summary, the evolution of Chinese land policies experienced a
transformation from the strict control of the quota of cultivated land for
developed land use to the intensive use of developed land, from fo-
cusing on land-use quantities to land-use quality, and from only paying
attention to cultivated land preservation to comprehensive ecosystem
protection (Wu et al., 2017; Wang et al., 2018). Chinese economic
growth and land financing of local governments stimulated dramatic
land-use changes. Subsequently, national land policies for controlling
these changes were implemented and effective only for a short period.
When the cultivated land expropriation was at its height after and food
security and social stability seemingly were threatened, a series of land
policy directives were used to manage land-use change (Wang et al.,
2012). The circulation process followed another circulation process and
was retained, showing a wave curve (Fig. 4). The evolution of land
policies in China was the result of a path-dependent process, which
included the reform of land use system, the economic development
environment, as well as a policy-making process that responded to
short-term land development (Spalding, 2017). The changes in land use
were the outcomes of the land policy failure and policy-making lag.
That presented the transformations in land policies and the different
phases of socioeconomic development (Frelichova and Fanta, 2015).
Some research results also showed that land policies have dominated
the influences in the changes in land use and are closely linked to such
changes (Papanastasis et al., 2015; Zhang et al., 2015). However, the
effects of land policies remain to be verified since the controversial
relationship between local and central government financing, and the
fair and rational land-use quota lack more long-term evidence.
4. Discussions and conclusions
Land resources have been an important part of the Chinese urba-
nization process over the past thirty years, especially the great
J. Wang et al.
Fig. 9. Changing areas of land consolidation for increasing cultivated land and land comprehensive improvement in China from 1999 to 2014.
conversion of cultivated land through its capitalization. The integrated
mode of land utilization and land financing has pushed industrializa-
tion forward and increased urbanization since the 1990s. Capital ac-
cumulation supported by land resources has continued to play a major
role in the Chinese context, showing an increasing rather than de-
creasing trend, as observed in developed countries. Conflicts of interest
have continued between the central and local governments due to the
current administrative setups and financial systems. Capitalization of
land resources has been a key driver of the rapid growth of urbanization
and economic development.
However, there were many achievements of the land-use policies in
the period, which are summarized as follows:
- establishment of a strict land administration system with land-use
control as its core;
- provision of laws and regulations for the preservation of basic cul-
tivated land with the implementation of a policy of Equilibrium
Requisition-Compensation of Cultivated Land through projects of land
development, land consolidation and land reclamation;
- step-by-step development of a compensational land-use system for
state-owned land;
- reform of the land expropriation system including compensation
standards and property for farmers;
- strengthening land-use rights for state-owned land and contract
rights for collective-owned cultivated land;
- further reform of the land administrative system with the estab-
lishment of a land-use monitoring system and a land law enforce-
ment system; and
- development of a national macro-control system to operate along
with land-use policies.
The land resources have met China’s demands by economic devel-
opment and urban construction. In the meantime, the protection of
cultivated land has been strengthened, and the area of cultivated land
lost to developed land has decreased progressively over the last decade.
The previous mode of extensive land utilization was changed to some
extent, and there has been a trend towards the more efficient and ef-
fective use of China’s limited land resources. The generation of culti-
vated land through land consolidation and land improvement was also
strengthened to realize the additional target of a dynamic balance (no
net loss) of cultivated land occupied by developed land instead of a
simple equilibrium of requisition-compensation of cultivated land in
general.
Notwithstanding some considerable achievements, the remarkable
economic growth was overly dependent on investment, exports and
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Land Use Policy 75 (2018) 375–387
land finance and was unstable, unbalanced, uncoordinated and un-
sustainable. There have also been implementation inconsistencies in the
ways that land-use policies have managed the rural land question and
urban land supply issues in China. Policies have not always been co-
ordinated. The post-reform period inherited a system of administration
with land-use control at its core (SCNPC, 1998). In the case of culti-
vated land, ownership remained with collectives, however defined,
whereas land-use rights contracts were extended to individual house-
holds under the household responsibility system and its subsequent
development within post-reform legislation (SCNPC, 2002). However,
the state reserved the right of eminent domain to re-designate land-use
types and thus to requisition the ownership of collective lands for urban
development in the ‘public-national interest’ (SCNPC, 2004). The state
itself owns all non-collective land, including land that has been re-
quisitioned, and the use rights for the development of requisitioned
cultivated land must be acquired by developers through long-term
leases from local state agencies. It is important to understand that in the
case of both farmers’ land-use contracts issued by collectives and de-
velopers’ urban land-use rights leased from local state agencies, the
individual now has well-established ownership rights to property but
not land (SCNPC, 2007). Through the MLR, legislation had been pro-
vided for the development, management and regulation of land mar-
kets, but in urban areas, the legislation was provided for land-use rights
markets only (SCNPC, 1998).
Secure agricultural production and a food surplus were seen as pre-
conditions of urbanization at the beginning of the period of opening up
and reform (Christiansen, 2009). For example, new town and village
enterprises were seen as promoting the development of locally based
manufacturing and industry alongside increased farm productivity
without any large-scale urbanization. In practice, the local economic
development of a large number of town and village enterprises was
unplanned and uncoordinated.
‘Strict developed land control’ was re-cast to ‘strict cultivated land
protection and strict developed land control’, but that did not resolve
the conflicts of interest that emerged with a shifting emphasis to the
development of regional industrial zones and pro-urbanization pro-
grams in the 1990s, especially after 1995. Wang and colleagues (2010)
provided a succinct review of key land administration legislation and
policy documents from 1986 to 2008. Wang et al. (2012) described
land-use policy in the period of increasing urbanization from 1996 to
2008. A series of policies for strict cultivated land protection and de-
veloped land control were proposed, especially focusing on protecting
the total amount of cultivated land. However, conflicts between the
imperatives of development and cultivated land protection have been
intensified. Cultivated land pollution caused by the development has
J. Wang et al.
further intensified land degradation. Changing agriculture practices and
food safety needs set against growing ecological protection considera-
tions have further raised demands on cultivated land. At the same time,
local government replacement schemes did not focus on the quality of
land. Policies did not provide incentives for local governments to re-
duce wasting already developed lands by recycling damaged, aban-
doned, unused or idle urban land but rather led to a proliferation of
illegal land uses instead. To pursue a simple equilibrium between the
total areas of cultivated land and developed land, policies were ne-
glected for more efficient and intensive uses of land resources. As po-
licies did not consider the actual needs of industrialization and urba-
nization, ‘fixes’ had to be found (Zheng, 2007). On the other hand,
policy abuse could contribute to cultivated land abandonment. For
example, a great deal of cultivated land was abandoned and allowed to
convert to wild grassland or barren land to avoid the equilibrium of re-
quisition-compensation policy in some areas. That land was subsequently
redeveloped without needing to meet the cultivated land quotas of
controlling approval in annual land-use plan. In some areas, a large
amount of ecological land space such as shoaly land and swampland,
were redeveloped to cultivated land under the policy of equilibrium of
requisition-compensation of farmland (Wang et al., 2018a).
China’s ecological civilization and urbanization must be co-
ordinated in step with both industrialization and agricultural moder-
nization to improve the entire population’s living standards.
Industrialization may be the driving force behind continuing social and
economic development, but ecological civilization and agricultural
modernization that ensures national food security and ecosystem se-
curity must form the basis for China’s on-going urbanization. Therefore,
there is an urgent need for China to reform land-use strategies for the
sustainable use of its land resources for the ecological civilization and
urbanization.
4.1. Inefficient land-use and intensive land-use modes
Nonetheless, the current situation may not be sustainable. China’s
industrial and urban development has been overly dependent on land-
use modes characterized by extensive expansion rather than the co-
ordinated and intensive use of scarce land resources. It is estimated that
China’s urbanization rate will reach at least two-thirds by 2030, with
300 million or more new urban residents. Land-use modes must become
more efficient and intensive to secure China’s strategic development
goals of coordinated industrialization, urbanization and agricultural
modernization. One of the strategies proposed for more intensive and
efficient land use should be ‘brownfield’ re-development through the
recycling of polluted, abandoned, unused and idle urban sites. In ad-
dition, the optimization and improvement of the industrial structure
will promote a transformation of the economic development mode.
Future land-use policy should be shifted to more efficient and effective
utilization of inventoried lands and move away from the wasteful
practice of extensive utilization of increased amounts of developed
lands. The current land-use policies should be shifted to control the
supply of industrial land and development zones via an industrial
structure adjustment. The unnecessary conversion of cultivated lands at
seemingly low costs and high returns to local governments has played a
considerable role in China’s regional development process. That process
needs to be re-set to promote zoned development that is suited for and
responsive to local conditions, with the focus on leading industries and
concentrations of population movement. The availability of land should
be ensured for leading industries suitable to the regional resources and
environmental conditions. The structure and distribution of industrial
and mining land should be optimized to reduce the urban industrial and
mining land per capita.
At the same time, the management mode that the state monopolizes
the supply of industrial land and urban land via land-use planning and
land-use quotas at national, provincial and county scales should be
changed. That has resulted in an imbalance of land supply and demand.
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Land Use Policy 75 (2018) 375–387
The supply of residential land should be skewed towards large cities
and metropolises to lower the price of land thereby reducing the price
of residential real estate and improving land utilization efficiency in
those cities.
4.2. Single objective control of cultivated land quantity and multi-
functionality of cultivated land utilization
The goal of strictly protecting cultivated land has long focused on
controlling the total amount of cultivated land. Besides the direct losses
for developed land use, land resources may also be spoiled through
over-farming and pollution from the development of adjacent land
(Chen, 2007). Remote-sensing surveys confirmed spatial variations in
changed use of industrial and urban land and the further degradation of
cultivated and grass lands through soil erosion. The quality of culti-
vated land is as important for food security as its quantity (Zhou et al.,
2010). Rather than focusing on protecting the total amount of culti-
vated land, China’s land-use management should focus on the quality
improvements of protected cultivated land such that the productivity
and use-value of a lesser amount of land under more intensive farming
is conserved. On the other hand, non-production functions of cultivated
land, including ecological regulation, landscape aesthetics, and leisure
tourism, have become increasingly important (Wang et al., 2018a).
Preservation policies of cultivated land are required for the man-
agement and regulation of land ecosystems. The focus should be shifted
to ensuring its multi-functionality of cultivated land utilization, re-
flecting its full socio-economic value and ecological value. It is neces-
sary to balance trade-offs and synergies between providing agricultural
and ecological goods at regional or macro scales. The multi-function-
ality of cultivated land use is of significance for improving land-use
efficiency and promoting regional sustainable development. Moreover,
cultivated land contamination should incur costs through legislation for
remediation and compensation regulated by a ‘Land Pollution
Prevention Act’ in accordance with the wider system of land manage-
ment and regulation (Fortona et al., 2012). Principally, however, the
key policy should be on increasing the low costs of cultivated land.
Costs must reflect its use-value in agricultural, ecological and social
terms—not only its lost use-value in ‘rural’ terms but also its use-value
after its conversion for release onto urban land-use markets.
4.3. Homogenization and differentiation of land-use policy
It is necessary to improve the national land spatial planning system.
The spatial differences in degree of developed land intensive use, land
cultivation rate, developed land-use rate and degree of land use have
been very significant in China. Differentiated land-use policy char-
acterized by regional function is to be implemented in different main
functional regions. The strategic orientation in the developed eastern
coastal regions should focus on strengthening the coastal economic belt
and building a new industrial base and growth area, whereas that in the
central agricultural regions should emphasize the protection of culti-
vated land. In the ecologically fragile western regions, the focus should
be on strengthening ecological restoration, controlling disorderly de-
velopment, and combating the occurrence and development of de-
sertification. The focus in the northeast region should be ensuring na-
tional food security, enhancing the ecological barrier function, and
strengthening water resources preservation.
National ecological protection zones should be delimited to ensure
preservation of connectivity and integrity for ecosystem. The strict
control of the development and utilization of natural forests, grasslands,
wetlands and other basic ecological land spaces is urgently needed. The
proportion of lands serving important ecological functions, including
water areas, wetlands, woodlands, grasslands, and partially unused
lands to total land should be maintained at above 75%. The ecological
compensation should be proposed for the implementation.
J. Wang et al.
4.4. Market-oriented land resource allocation and national macro-control
systems
China’s land market was still in the initial stages of development
when the MLR was established in the 1990s (Zhang, 1997). Incon-
sistencies and un-coordination with a market-oriented system were
inevitable. Prohibitions on the transfer of rural collectively owned land
to operate through a market-oriented mechanism, led to considerable
inequities between the countryside and cities (Dean and Damm-Luhr,
2010). Provisions in the Property Law of 2007 were intended to address
inequities inherent in the LAL of 1998. The positions of land adminis-
tration authorities as public organs and private entities should be dis-
tinguished, and the relevant legislation must be fully amended to im-
plement the Property Law. On the other hand, the ‘low-cost’
expropriation of collectively owned cultivated land by local state
agencies became the primary method for increasing the stock of urban
developed lands (Zhang, 2000). This policy led to the phenomenon of
‘financing through land’ and caused the impoverishment of farmers
who lost their land, which exacerbated the social divide between the
rich and poor. Land requisition financed local fiscal deficits and sup-
ported rapid urbanization. It is crucial to establish a market-oriented
allocation and an open, competitive, unified and orderly land-use
market for urban and rural developed land (MLR, 2008). Moreover,
current macro-control mechanisms should be shifted to operate via fi-
nancial levers through taxes, investments, subsidies and interest rates to
manage market-based land allocations. Central and local government
finances need to be rebalanced. Given the income through the abuse of
‘low cost’ land expropriation for local government, it is clear that fi-
nancial mechanisms have been dysfunctional. Land requisition and
compensation costs should be part of a complete land-use market.
With regard to land legislation that underpins land use and land-use
policy transformation, a complete legal framework that underpins the
intensive and efficient utilization and protection of land resources,
market-oriented allocation and a national control mechanism em-
ploying financial levers should be required. It is necessary to draw up
‘basic’ land legislation that includes the principles of the land property
rights system, the land allocation and utilization system and a national
macro-control system. The Property Law and the Urban Real Estate
Management Law should be modified and derived from a Basic Law of
Land. It would then be necessary to formulate a Land Registration Act, a
Land-use Planning Law, a Land-use Control and Zoning Law, a Land
Acquisition Law, a Land Remediation Law, and a Land Pollution Prevention
Act to form a complete system of land laws and legal processes.
Acknowledgments
This study was financially supported by the National Natural
Science Foundation of China (41330750 and 41571087). We especially
would like to thank Mr. Zhen Zhengyuan for his valuable suggestions
and analysis of the manuscript. We would also like to thank the journal
reviewers for their valuable suggestions on an earlier version of this
manuscript.
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