China land grabs fuelling unrest, says premier
Fri Jan 20, 2006
By Chris Buckley
BEIJING, Jan 20 (Reuters) - Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao said seizures of farmland are provoking widespread rural unrest as his government pledged efforts to improve the livelihood of poorly paid rural migrant workers.
"We absolutely can't commit an historic error over land problems," said Wen in a speech made late on Dec. 29 but only issued in China's state-run press on Friday.
"Some locales are unlawfully occupying farmers' land and not offering reasonable economic compensation and arrangements for livelihoods, and this is sparking mass incidents in the countryside."
The government on Thursday promised to improve treatment of the tens of millions of rural migrants who work in the factories, building sites and shops fuelling the country's boom.
In many parts of China, these workers' incomes have stagnated or risen slightly for the past decade, despite annual economic growth of about 10 percent. Without legal recourse, many go unpaid and are vulnerable to abuse.
In Guangdong's Pearl River Delta, China's export powerhouse, migrant workers' monthly pay rose just 68 yuan ($8.50) in the 12 years to 2005, according to a report in the China Youth Daily last year. Guangdong's minimum legal wage is about 500 yuan, though with overtime many workers earn 800 to 1,000 yuan.
The decision passed by China's State Council Standing Committee, or cabinet, promised "swift" action to improve rural migrants' wages, as well as steps to provide them with social security and legal rights.
In the past 20 years, about 140 million farmers and their families have moved to find work in towns and cities, according to estimates from the National Bureau of Statistics.
Many migrant workers have no social security or medical insurance, and so farmland remains a crucial safety-net for them, as well as for traditional farmers.
But Wen said that, in spite of repeated efforts to rein in local officials' seizures of farmland to build housing, offices and factories, farmers have continued to see land taken for little compensation.
China's rapid urbanisation "has been at the price of excessively low compensation for farmers and by sacrificing swathes of fertile land", said Wen.
In 2004, China said it had lost 6.7 million hectares of arable land -- 5 percent of the country's total -- to urban development and factories in the previous seven years.
Wen said the continued "reckless occupation" of farmland would "create large numbers of landless farmers and present a grave problem for the sustainable development and stability of the countryside and whole economy and society".
On Thursday, China's Ministry of Public Security said protests, riots and other "mass incidents" were rising.
The Ministry of Public Security put the total number of such incidents at 87,000 last year, up 6.6 percent from 2004.
Hong Kong's mainland-controlled Ta Kung Pao newspaper has quoted Public Security Minister Zhou Yongkang as saying there were 74,000 "mass incidents" in 2004 compared with 58,000 in 2003.
In December, paramilitary police opened fire on residents of Dongzhou village in the southern province of Guangdong protesting against the lack of compensation for land taken for a new power plant. The government says three villagers were killed, though some villagers and reports put the toll higher.
And on Jan. 14, several people were injured in clashes between villagers and police in a land dispute in Panlong village in Guangdong.
Wen said that narrowing the divide between China's cities and villages would be difficult.
"For a long time, our economic and social development has had the problem of one leg being longer than the other, and the rural social development leg is even shorter."
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