ABSTRACT
China’s urbanization rate increased from 19.39 percent in 1980 to 53.73 percent in 2013. This is equivalent to an average annual increase of 1.04 percentage points over time. During the same period, people living in urban areas jumped from 191.40 million to 731.11 million, a net increase of 539.71 million. 1 This dramatic spatial shift in the population has deep implications on land use. In order to accommodate a larger population as well as increasingly sophisticated and modern urban functions, urban areas in China expanded rapidly. Between 1990 and 2013, the area of land used for urban construction nationwide increased from 11,608 km 2 to 47,109 km 2 , or a 305.83 percent increase. 2
Most urban expansion takes place through requisitioning rural land, including both cultivated land and rural construction land. Cultivated land is more vulnerable than rural construction land as clearance and compensation costs are much lower. Between 1997 and 2007, authorized conversion of cultivated land to construction uses (both urban and rural) in the whole country totaled 1.97 million hectares, and uncovered illegal conversion between 1999 and 2005 was estimated to be 333,000 hectares. 3 In addition to meeting true needs for urban space, Chinese cities’ dependence on land revenue as a major financing source of urban development also helps explain the fast pace of land conversion. 4 Despite the fact that the farmland protection policy has been tightened in recent years, from 2009 to 2012, total cultivated land in China still dropped from 135,38 to 135,15 million hectares, although a slight increase of 4.9 thousand hectares was registered for 2013. 5
According to the National Land Consolidation Plan (2011-2015), by 2010, per capita cultivated land in China was only 0.1 hectares, less than 40 percent of the world average. Among all cultivated land, only 2.9 percent was graded as excellent and 26.5 percent as good and the rest was all categorized as mediumor low-quality land. 6 In addition, land fragmentation and pollution were also common factors to affect quantity and quality of agricultural production (MLR, 2012, pp. 17-8). 7
On the other hand, to maintain China’s grain self-sufficiency, a major national security concern, China passed strict farmland protection laws, regulations and policies. The Land Administration Law, promulgated in 1998 and amended in 2004, stipulates that the amount of farmland in China must not decrease in any single year. The state imposes land use control, and any conversion of cultivated land to construction uses must be made up through reclaiming at least an equal amount of cultivated land of equal quality. 8 However, the enforcement of the law was difficult and unsatisfactory. Reclamation often far lagged behind conversion and farmland quality was not easy to measure. In response to earlier failures in achieving cultivated land protection targets, in 2008, the “Outlines of National Land-use Master Plan (2006-2020)” was released which strictly set the 1.8 billion mu (120 million hectares) cultivated land redline, including 1.56 billion mu (104 million hectare) of basic cultivated land that must be protected before 2020. The national total was broken down hierarchically into protection targets for provinces, cities and counties, which were used as bottom lines for local land use planning. “Decisions on Several Big Issues Regarding Promoting Rural Reform and Development” passed in the same year by the Central Committee of CPC reinforced China’s farmland protection policy. The document reiterated that reclaiming farmland must be done before requisitioning farmland takes place and crossjurisdictional balancing among provinces/autonomous regions/provincial-level cities is prohibited.
