The time is ripe for China to enact a land law

Before the 2013 National Land Day, Sun Yinghui, director of the Land Dispute Mediation and Resolution Affairs Center of the Ministry of Land and Resources, said in an exclusive interview with a Xinhua reporter that laws and regulations such as the Land Administration Law have played an irreplaceable safeguard role in reform and development. As the concepts of the Constitution and the Property Law take root in people's minds, to protect citizens' property rights, it is necessary to change the land management approach that emphasizes administrative management and neglects civil rights, and to enact a land law as the basic law on land. The need is urgent and the time is ripe.

Including the Land Administration Law, China's current legal system for land and resources has, since reform, effectively supported the overall situation of economic development, supported the processes of industrialization, urbanization and agricultural modernization, supported China's sprint to rank second in the world in total economic output, and further supported the basic stability of the red line for cultivated land. But it must also be noted that the Land Administration Law focuses on “management”, with the purpose of strengthening administrative management. It leans toward administrative norms and neglects civil norms, and emphasizes administrative management more while clarifying civil rights and obligations less. At present, disputes and stability incidents surrounding land issues such as land expropriation and demolition emerge endlessly, and land issues rank first among petition cases nationwide. In the final analysis, this is because the current land management approach does not meet the growing demand for adjusting a large number of civil property rights. Carrying out reform of the land expropriation system, protecting rural land rights, promoting rural land circulation, and advancing a unified urban-rural land market cannot be done without the support of a land law.

In fact, the Land Administration Law, enacted in the early period of reform and opening up to meet the needs of economic development at that time, although revised many times, has not changed its nature as an emergency administrative law and cannot provide a legal basis for some important current institutional arrangements. These include important legal relationships such as the national land inspection system, the circulation of rural collective construction land use rights, and the realization of rural land property rights. Integrating management of all types of land and issuing a land law covering all land and all its various rights has become the consensus of far-sighted people and all sectors of society and the general trend.

Emphasizing administrative management and neglecting civil rights is, figuratively speaking, the “official standard” of the land management approach. At present, the biggest obstacle to reform and development is the issue of property rights, especially land property rights, which has become a stubborn fortress that cannot be bypassed in breaking out of the deep-water zone of reform. Enacting a land law can effectively break through the “three ambiguities” of land property rights: ambiguous boundaries, ambiguous subjects, and ambiguous status, and achieve a breakthrough in rural land system reform. Because the current Land Administration Law belongs to the category of economic law and mainly serves to regulate administrative management behavior, a large number of non-economic factors outside the market seep in, causing loss of state-owned assets and idleness and waste of land resources. China's land policy and real estate regulation have long had many short-term measures and few reform policies, many administrative measures and few rule-of-law norms, and many regulatory measures and few economic methods, which is also related to the absence of a land law. In land market regulation, increasing economic, technological and legal regulatory means, highlighting market allocation, highlighting the role of subjects, and highlighting legal norms cannot be separated from the institutional dividends created by a land law.

Due to the characteristics of the stage of development, although various land rights are stipulated, the core of the Land Administration Law is administrative management, not protection of private property rights. As reform and opening up enter a new period, accelerating legislation in key areas such as land has become an urgent task. Legislative planning is an important component of the legal system for land and resources, with the purpose of resolving legislative conflicts and preventing legal fragmentation. At present, it is necessary to step up the formulation of a legislative plan for land and resources, which can start from a low level and a small scope, while accelerating efforts to push legislative departments to launch and advance the legislative process for a basic law on land and resources. The first step is to include a land law in legislative planning and comprehensively advance the preliminary legislative work.