What new challenges does the balance of cultivated land occupation and compensation face?
The balance of cultivated land occupation and compensation originated from the formal implementation of the new "Land Administration Law" in January 1999, which explicitly proposed: implement the system of compensation for occupied cultivated land. In February of the same year, the Ministry of Land and Resources issued a document requiring the implementation of the “system of occupying one unit of construction land and compensating one unit.” It clearly put forward the concept of balance of cultivated land occupation and compensation, that is, however much cultivated land is occupied by construction, an equivalent amount of cultivated land of comparable quantity and quality must be compensated. At the same time, on the basis of summarizing land development and consolidation experience from various places, two important policies were proposed: first, the land exchange policy; second, the policy of offsetting by 60 percent of indicators. In 2004, the State Council issued Document No. 28, proposing the ”linking the increase and decrease” policy, namely “encourage the consolidation of rural construction land, and the increase in urban construction land must be linked to the decrease in rural construction land.” The key point of the policy design is: through depreciation and reclamation of rural collective construction land, cultivated land increases, and urban construction also obtains corresponding land indicators, achieving multiple benefits at once. Projects operate in a closed manner, with a strict project approval system. Linked pilot projects are approved by the Ministry of Land and Resources, and the scale of project indicators issued each year is limited.
The basic logic of the balance of occupation and compensation policy is: however much cultivated land is occupied, the same amount of cultivated land is needed to compensate for it, in order to ensure our country's land red line. The basic logic of linking the increase and decrease is: however much rural construction land is reduced, that amount of urban construction land can be increased, balancing the indicators. The balance of occupation and compensation focuses on not reducing the retained amount of cultivated land, while linking the increase and decrease focuses on the development of incremental construction land. The relationship between the two is no longer one of how much is occupied and how much is compensated, but rather emphasizes the relationship of increments, creating incentives for local areas.
It should be said that these two policies still play an important role in cultivated land management. In April of this year, the Hubei Provincial People's Government issued the "Notice on Implementing the Strictest Economical and Intensive Land Use System," proposing: strengthen cultivated land protection. For construction that occupies cultivated land, implement the balance of cultivated land occupation and compensation in accordance with the provisions of determining occupation by compensation, compensating before occupying, and compensating superior land for superior land. Implement paid use for construction land indicators and cultivated land occupation and compensation balance indicators optimized through linking the increase and decrease of urban and rural construction land and comprehensive rural land consolidation.
The implementation of the balance of cultivated land occupation and compensation and the policy of linking the increase and decrease of urban and rural construction land has produced positive results in our province. For example, from 2011 to 2013, Wuhan legally approved 12.64 wan mu of non-agricultural occupied cultivated land, and during the same period supplemented it through various methods. The balance of occupation and compensation was achieved. In 2013, Yichang had 605.25 wan mu of existing cultivated land, and had achieved the balance of occupation and compensation of cultivated land area for 12 consecutive years. Counties and districts are allowed to transfer surplus newly increased cultivated land indicators within the city area, which raised the enthusiasm of various places for net increase in cultivated land area. Huanggang's actual cultivated land area is 813.59 wan mu, and its basic farmland protection area is 487 wan mu, higher than the responsibility target assigned by the provincial government for three consecutive years.
However, the policies of balance of occupation and compensation and linking the increase and decrease also face new challenges: mainly shown in:
First, economic development's dependence on cultivated land is enormous, and the situation of cultivated land protection is more severe. Many places are in a period of accelerated industrialization and urbanization. With the acceleration of industrialization, marketization, and urbanization, overall the quantity and quality of cultivated land are declining, and the trend is intensifying. Some places lack reserve cultivated land resources, making it difficult to achieve balance of occupation and compensation within the city area.
Second, with the implementation of the State Council's opinions on further advancing the reform of the household registration system, a large number of farmers are pouring into towns and cities, and new rural construction and large-scale urbanization expansion make it difficult to avoid occupying large amounts of basic farmland.
Third, the scale indicators for construction land are seriously insufficient. Some cities are in a stage of rapid economic development, and various major projects are accelerating. In some cities, the annual land use indicators issued by the province are less than 7000 mu, while actual land demand reaches more than 2 wan mu. Illegal land use still occurs from time to time. In a certain city, the land use plan approved by higher authorities by 2020 includes 136 square kilometers of newly increased land use scale, but in the past three years it has already exceeded 100 square kilometers. At this rate, it can only last until 2016.
Fourth, conduct top-level design for the entry of collective operational construction land into the market. Relevant central and provincial documents have put forward the key points of rural land use system reform, exploring the entry of collective operational construction land into the market and the paid withdrawal mechanism for rural residential land. Pilot projects should be accelerated, and implementation measures should be formulated and issued.
Fifth, improve the performance assessment system for economical land use, link the annual newly increased construction land amount with the newly increased GDP added value, determine the GDP land consumption indicator, more accurately reflect the newly increased construction land consumed by the added value of a place's annual GDP, more accurately reflect the level of land resource conservation in a place's economic development, and promote local governments to use land economically and intensively.
Sixth, formulate preferential policies to incentivize economical and intensive land use.
Seventh, improve the tax adjustment mechanism, fully levy the urban land use tax, collect on behalf 20% of the idle land fee, and strengthen tax and fee collection measures.
In short, the tax-sharing reform strengthened centralization in the fiscal and taxation system, but also to a certain extent gave rise to the development model of local governments generating wealth from land. Land finance improved local enthusiasm and autonomy. According to statistics, in 2013 local government land transfer fee revenue was 39073 yi yuan, which was 152.6% of the budgeted figure at the beginning of the year. In the first half of this year, the national total reached 21129 yi yuan, a year-on-year increase of 26.3%. With the deepening of rural land system reform, the advancement of various reform measures, and the acceleration of industrialization and urbanization, the policy of balance of cultivated land occupation and compensation faces many challenges, faces new opportunities, and faces many new measures that need to be improved and explored.