Officials Slip Through Land-Use Loopholes

Melting patches of snow scattered around busy demolition and building sites in Shijiazhuang illustrate a bitter winter's failure to slow the breakneck speed of construction in this capital of Hebei Province.

January marked the start of the third and final year of a province-wide modernization program that includes Shijiazhuang.

In the city, the local government is investing 140 billion yuan as part of a campaign to upgrade the old part of town by demolishing 7.6 million square meters of building space and completing 600 new construction projects.

Construction workers are buzzing. But among certain city government officials who've been managing this massive project, the winter is getting colder, and this year's final construction push could be their last hurrah.

Since November, Century Weekly has learned, several officials at the Shijiazhuang Municipal Bureau of Land and Resources have come under probe or have been detained by a Communist Party disciplinary agency on suspicions of malfeasance. These include Tong Shusheng, a mid-level bureau officer who has not been seen since becoming the first target of investigators.

Several detained officials allegedly falsified records in the course of converting farmland to property deemed fit for urban use, lied about tract sizes, and abused their power while personally profiting from the sale of land under government control. An audit initially shed light on the alleged corruption.

What's happening amid Shijiazhuang's overhaul is typical of conditions in many parts of China where real estate prices have been skyrocketing and developers gulp down more farmland every year. Much of the land targeted for city expansion is taken from government-controlled farms.

Limits and Loopholes

To ensure a stable national supply of grain, the Chinese government has declared that 1.2 million square kilometres of land must be maintained for farming nationwide. This "red line" rule limits what can be converted for urban development.

But a local government that wants more development land yet risks crossing the red line can, according to Beijing's Overall Land Utilization Plan, legally reconvert unfarmed land back to agricultural use and then obtain a corresponding amount of farmland for urban use.

Apparently, Shijiazhuang officials took advantage of this legal loophole but overstepped the bounds.

Investigators say a worthless tract of wasteland classified as part of the nearby city of Gaoyi was falsely reported as restored farmland. This land development quota was then sold to other districts and counties.

In one instance in 2007, the Hebei Provincial Land and Resources Department approved Gaoyi's Wengyao Restoration Project by accepting a farm-development land swap. But the area was far smaller than claimed, a local resident surnamed Liu told Century Weekly.

In an attempt to cover up the scam, a sign at the site boasted a tract size much larger than the actual 0.6 square kilometres.

Land restorations that receive government funds are required to meet certain criteria including soil quality and topsoil depth.
But at the Wengyao cite, the soil layer is less than 10 centimeters and, according to another local resident, remains idle.

A source familiar with the Shijiazhuang land bureau said land-replacement rights associated with the Gaoyi project were sold at a high price to neighboring cities and counties as soon as officials declared the restoration "completed."

Lucrative Land
 
Land sales linked with annual construction quotas are valuable resources for local government land bureaus. And local government income from land sales in Shijiazhuang has soared in recent years as officials made use of tight land supply policies while increasing the scale of demolitions, land purchases and land warehousing.

In 2008, Shijiazhuang sold more than 892 hectares for 1.8 billion yuan. In 2009, revenues skyrocketed to about 5 billion yuan.

An official at the Shijiazhuang land bureau said similar bureaus across the country, because they have a monopoly on the sale of land under China's property system, can play with development rights and developers. In this way, they enjoy huge profits from large transactions.

At the same time, these deals are marked by a lack of transparency.

A source at the central government's National Ministry of Land and Resources said work is under way is curtail official abuse of the land-swap program.

But under the current system, which lacks clear regulation, more problems are likely to surface. The cold winter for land bureau officials in Shijiazhuang may reflect just the tip of the iceberg.

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Full article in Chinese: http://magazine.caing.com/2010-01-29/100112385.html