Early March used to be a busy time for the mother of Yang Xianwu, a 37-year-old farmer of Shufang Village in Chengdu, capital of Southwest China's Sichuan Province. But this year, she has plenty of time to squander -- and ponder. Sometimes, he sees her staring blankly by the new highway, where her green crops used to sprout in spring and turn golden yellow in autumn.

Yang can sense his mother's loss and worry about the future, and feels a heavy burden. He is the one in the eight-member family entrusted to decide how to use the 60,000-odd yuan (US$7,246.4) compensation the family got for lost arable land. "Since it's the only source of funds for our livelihood, the money should be exposed to no risk," Yang says.

But in comparison with many other Chinese farmers who lost their land, Yang and his family are lucky.

A national investigation into land abuse, conducted by the Ministry of Land and Resources last year, confirmed that many farmers got either no compensation for their lost land or little.

Premier Wen Jiabao said in his government work report delivered to this year's session of the National People's Congress that the government should ensure proper compensation for farmers whose land has been acquired.

The legitimate reason for land acquisition is mainly to facilitate infrastructure development for public welfare, which explains the smaller compensation to farmers in comparison to their lands' market value.

But many farmers have found to their rage that the acquired land has been used for commercial real estate development, even luxury golf clubs.

The ministry received 4,041 complaint letters and petitions last year, over 50 per cent higher than in 2002 -- most of them from angry farmers.

And over 70 per cent of the total petitions the Communist Party of China's Central Commission for Discipline Inspection (CCDI) received last year were related to land abuse.

China lost 2.53 million hectares of arable land last year, 50 per cent more than the previous year. The country's total area of cultivated land at the end of year 2003 was 123 million hectares.

Both development zones and golf courses will top the work agenda of the Ministry of Land and Resources in its campaign this year to crack down on land abuse, says Long Bin, a publicity official with the ministry.

In view of the glamour of golf as a passport to aristocracy in China, many local governments have looked to golf courses to provide the symbol of their "outstanding" investment environment.

In total, China has 176 golf courses, but only 10 have been approved by the Ministry of Land and Resources.

Observers believe the spreading construction golf courses is no different from the current "enclosure movement" for various industrial parks and development zones.

Correspondingly, 2,580 of the country's 3,837 development zones and industrial parks have not been approved by the State Council or provincial governments and are, therefore, illegal.

They both involve local governments using acquisition powers to grab land from farmers at a low price and then resell at much higher prices.

The Ministry of Land and Resources kicked off a national campaign last July to sort out "illegal" development zones and industrial parks, and a similar campaign against golf courses was launched in January.

Long believes the ministry's new reform of having land officials under the provincial level to report directly to the ministry will help achieve better results in this year's battle, because local governments will no longer be in any position to interfere with land use examination and approval.

Meng Xiangzhou, a researcher with the Chinese Academy of Land and Resources Economics, believes the move by the State Council is to save the country's arable land from continuous decrease and to ease the pain and anger of farmers, who have lost their land to "fake" acquisitions.

But what the government can do to comfort the landless farmers remains an even bigger challenge, because their lost land can never be returned in most cases.

Many deputies to the 10th National People's Congress (NPC) and members of the 10th National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC) suggested ways to ease landless farmers' sorrow and pain at their annual sessions this year. They said the farmers are paying a dear price for the country's fast urbanization process, which devoured 6.6 million hectares of cultivable land between 1996 and 2003.

About 40 million farmers have lost their land in the process, and many more will in the future.

For Wu Mingxi, vice secretary-general of the 10th CPPCC National Committee, the livelihood of landless farmers has become an issue concerning the stability of Chinese society.

Talking about the biggest complaint -- "unfairly low compensations for farmers' lost arable land" -- Wu says one underlying problem is that compensation does not trickle down much to the farmers even in the absence of corrupt officials.

Chinese law says that all the country's land resources belong to the State and the collectives, the latter comprising three layers -- economic organizations of villagers, villages and townships. Farmers only have the right to cultivate the land.

Therefore, if compensation is paid to the owners, farmers are entitled to but a small proportion, which is meant for farmers' lost crops and is called qingmiao fei (literally fees for lost green crops).

Take the case of Yang as an example -- only one-fifth of the compensation for his family's lost arable hand has come to their hands.

Obviously, some stipulations of the laws, enacted either before or at the beginning of the country's reform and opening-up, which has caused the deepest changes in Chinese people's life, have lagged behind the times.

One good thing for Chinese farmers before the 1990s was that if their land was acquired by the government, they were transformed from farmers to city residents, according to Wu.

The government could easily arrange jobs for the landless farmers, instead of the popular current practice of handing out a certain amount of money.

"In most cases, to arrange jobs for landless farmers is much more difficult for local governments than handing out some money," says Wu.

Correspondingly, to be transformed into a city resident is no longer an attractive option.

Yang Yongan, director of the Dongsheng Township of Beijing, is confronted with a headache -- several thousand of his farmers-turned-urban-residents are asking back their farmer identities.

It is difficult for these farmers to lead a well-off life in downtown Beijing because they are not covered by the urban social security system and their land-loss compensation is too little, says Yang.

A local regulation of Beijing last year stipulates that each farmer can get at most 30,000 yuan (US$3,623) at one time for lost arable land.

Sichuan Governor Zhang Zhongwei also admits the compensation for farmers' lost arable land is too low. China's current Law on Land Management stipulates that compensation not exceed 30 times the average yearly output value of the targeted land during the three years prior to the acquisition.

Luckily, things are expected to improve soon. Minister of Land and Resources Sun Wensheng disclosed last Thursday that a new land acquisition regulation will be released this year, which, "very possibly," will define a much higher compensation standard.

But before the central government increases compensation, local governments can provide other help to landless farmers, such as occupational training and special allowances, says Zhang.

Zhang wishes farmers like Yang can take a brave step forward against the backdrop of inevitable urbanization, but says the government should provide a safety net covering these farmers' old-age pension, medical insurance and employment insurance.

"Farmers are entitled to share the benefits of urbanization. We plan to allocate 800 million yuan (US$96.6 million) to improve the social welfare system targeted at landless farmers," he says.

(China Daily March 16, 2004)