Yan Jinming: How to Manage the Decentralization of China's Land Use Policy

Yan Jinming, Executive Director of the National Academy of Development and Strategy, RUC, “Changjiang Scholar” Distinguished Professor, and expert on land issues

On March 12, the State Council of PRC issued the “Decision on Authorizing and Entrusting the Right of Examination and Approval in Land Use” (GUOFA [2020] No.4) (hereinafter referred to as the “Decision”). In view of the profound changes in the world and China’s conditions, the “Decision” implements the spirit of the Fourth Plenary Session of the 19th Central Committee of the Communist Party of China and the Central Economic Work Conference, echoes the latest edition of “Land Administration Law of the People's Republic of China”, further deepens the reform "to delegate power, improve regulation, and upgrade services", reforms the land administration system, and gives the people's governments at the provincial level greater power of decision in land use.

In fact, the "Decision" aims at "synergy" by delegating power of examination and approval to the lower levels. However, "synergy" is not to "enlarge scale" and the "Decision" does not mean to "deregulate" the scale of construction land. Objectively speaking, this decentralization is thorough. However, it did not undermine the principle of cherishing and rationally utilizing land; or the strictest cultivated land protection system and the requirement to firmly defend the red line for cultivated land protection; or the future implementation of national territorial space planning and space use control.

Of course, the cognition, propagation and implementation of any policy may face lots of risks. Therefore, the policies must be implemented based on strict directive standardization, supervision and regulation. First of all, the Ministry of Natural Resources should strengthen the guidance and service for the land use examination and approval of the people's governments of all provinces, autonomous regions and municipalities directly under the Central Government; second, it should make use of the information platform to build a standardized, open and transparent project examination and approval regulatory regime; in addition, a "quantity + quality” dual system should be established for agricultural land evaluation and supervision; finally, more attention should be paid to the protection of farmers' rights, coupled with various social oversight mechanisms to supervise the government behaviors, so as to effectively safeguard the interests of farmers from being infringed.