Land sitting idle that is the property of China's military should be put up for public auction, the Ministry of Land and Resources (MLR) said yesterday.

The new rules for the transfer of unused military lands were jointly released by the MLR, the Ministry of Finance, and the People's Liberation Army General Logistics Department.

The idle military land was previously transferred through agreements outside the framework of local supervision. It will now instead be included in the land supply plan of local governments, and transfer to the local land market will go to the highest bidder in an open tendering process.

The rules also require that the idle military land should first meet the demand of military units.

In a related story, according to an official with the MLR yesterday, China has used satellite remote sensing techniques to check illegal land use in 90 cities.

"The techniques will help find out and check illegal land use in time and give full play to the role of government macro-control in land supply," said the official with the ministry's bureau of law enforcement and supervision, who didn't give his name.

The official said satellite pictures using remote sensing techniques can show the changing of a city's newly used land for construction in a period, thereby find out whether the involved land use breaks laws.

The government checks will focus on activities like approving lands in contrary to government plans and industrial policies and illegally expropriating farmland for construction, according to the official.

(Xinhua News Agency February 28, 2007)