China’s major cities required to designate, protect “permanent fundamental farmland”

BEIJING - In the midst of deepening urbanization in China, the Central Government has taken measures to protect arable land outside of its city centres. The governments of the 14 largest cities in China, including Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou and Shenzhen, have reportedly been told to survey farmland outside their urban centres and along traffic routes that might possibly be used for commercial construction, and to label good plots as “permanent fundamental farmland”.

This will render them off-limits to commercial or non-agricultural development projects - in other words, they are to be strictly reserved for growing crops alone, and nothing else.

According to the policy jointly issued by China’s Ministry of Land and Resources (MLR) and the Ministry of Agriculture (MOA), this programme will be extended to the rest of the country by the end of 2016.

This policy slightly cuts against the grain of other central policies designed to increase the population and commercial activities of the country’s largest cities. As MLR representative Zhang Xiaoling said, “the challenge will be matching a plot of land with the people and organisations that have the rights to use it, and preparing the paperwork needed to prove that link”. www.webershandwick.cn (ATI).