Land Grabs Sow Pain, Poverty for Chinese Farmers

The old farmer doesn’t let a day go by without trekking out to his fields with a muddy hoe over his shoulder and rubber boots on his feet.

It’s a lifelong habit for Cheng Tianbao, 66, unbreakable even after bulldozers came and turned his world upside-down.

The county government wants to build an industrial park on the farmland that has been the lifeblood of his village. The fields now lie as good as dead under piles of sand dumped by construction crews.

“I still go out there every day, if only just to stare at the land,” Cheng said. “I think about the planting season, how I should be sowing wheat and rapeseed. If I stayed home, I would go crazy.”

China still has more small farmers than any other country. But their numbers and the land they work are shrinking. Land grabs by developers cashing in on two decades of turbocharged economic growth and local officials looking for a cut of the profits have thrown more than 30 million peasants off their farms, according to government statistics. By 2030, more than 78 million are expected to lose their land. That’s about one in every 10 Chinese peasants.

In place of small farms, high-tech industrial parks, real estate projects, golf courses and expressways have sprung up, changing the ancient face of the countryside. Although most Chinese don’t regard urbanization itself as unhealthy, the process is often corrupt and development thrives at the expense of a disenfranchised peasantry.

As much as 80% of the nearly 12,000 square miles of farmland turned into development zones has been acquired illegally. The government reported more than 160,000 cases of fraudulent land grabs in 2003, twice the number of the year before.

Land disputes have sparked violent protests and driven petitioners to Beijing to seek redress. Xiaoxi residents are no exception. But authorities have responded with arrests and retaliation.

“My wife and I haven’t slept at home for days. We are terrified,” said Cheng, who was interviewed in the home of a neighbor. “I can’t figure it out. Why don’t we peasants have any rights? Why is it that the government can do whatever it wants?”

Mindful of a history of rebellion by peasants, including their role in bringing the Communist Party to power, the central government has repeatedly tried to crack down on land abuse. The Ministry of Land and Resources is seeking to manage land use directly to cut out corruption at the local level.

At the opening session Friday of the annual National People’s Congress, rural issues dominated. Premier Wen Jiabao promised to improve farmers’ lives by slashing taxes and making land protection a national priority.

“The strictest possible system for protecting farmland will be implemented, and control over the use of farmland will be strengthened in accordance with the law,” Wen said in a nationally televised speech in the Great Hall of the People. “We will absolutely put an end to illegal acquisition and use of farmland and rectify unauthorized changes in the use of primary farmland.”

But, as an old Chinese saying goes, the sky is high and the emperor is far.

At the heart of the problem is an antiquated land policy. The Communists abolished private ownership of land after taking power in 1949. Land belongs to the state -- and in rural communities, that usually means the local government. As China started to institute reforms in the 1980s, the government tried to increase incentives for agricultural production by allowing peasants to lease land for as long as 30 years. But they had little protection when the building frenzy began.

“Since peasants have no real ownership rights, they could never act as an equal at the negotiating table,” said Hu Xingdou, an economist at the Beijing Institute of Technology. “The government owns the land, so almost any land reclamation can be justified in the name of public interest. Peasants have no choice but to back down.”

Local officials lease the land to developers at high prices and use the windfall on ambitious construction projects that help them build reputations and gain promotions.

Peasants are supposed to be compensated for the land, but they often get little or nothing. Hu said that land taken from farmers is often not actually used for building because developers can’t get the financing. But the farmers don’t get the land back. “Displaced peasants can do nothing but watch the land idle away,” he said.

The 2,600 residents of Xiaoxi never expected to lose their land. Their village sits in the mountainous interior of eastern China’s Zhejiang province. Living standards here are higher than in communities deeper in the hinterland, but Xiaoxi is in the poorest area of the province. It is burdened by high population density and a scarcity of tillable land; there is less than a tenth of an acre for each of the county’s 400,000 residents.

Nevertheless, county officials committed more than 8,000 acres to a special development zone. Xiaoxi sits at the center of the proposed project, and almost all of the villagers’ land has been set aside for development.

Cheng said his 10-member family grew rice and vegetables on a little less than an acre.

“We also had enough grain in storage to last us for a year in case there is a drought,” he said. “Now we have to buy all our food from the market.”

Cheng’s three sons, like many rural people, supplement the family income by working in cities. But they come home for part of the year and regard the family farm as insurance should they lose their city jobs or grow too old to work. Unlike urban Chinese, peasants are not entitled to government benefits such as healthcare, unemployment payments and pensions.

“The government promised us $2,500 a person to take away our land. What good is $2,500? We’re supposed to live on that for the rest of our lives?” complained a father of two who was willing to give only his family name, Chen. “Before, we could live off the land. Now my children will have nothing to fall back on.”

That fear inspired a mini-marriage-and-baby boom. Because anyone living in the village before a June cutoff date was entitled to the compensation payment, mothers gave birth by Caesarean section before their full term, villagers said, and singles quickly got married. In one month, the village welcomed 69 pairs of newlyweds.

The local government paid the promised compensation, but villagers soon started asking whether they got fair deals.

It turned out that county officials had forced the village chief to sign away their rights on a blank contract, which they filled in later. One of the village officials present at the meeting, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said the chief first refused to sign the contract, saying he needed to discuss it with the farmers. But they were told no one would be allowed to leave until he signed.

“At first we thought it was just a little bit of land and it was probably no big deal,” the local official said. “We had no idea they would take that much.”

Chen said that one farmer went insane the day the bulldozers arrived and has been sent to a mental hospital. The rest of the villagers decided to stand up for their rights -- and got some help on the Internet.

Fang Weiqiang, who ran a motorcycle repair shop in town, downloaded the central government policy on farmers’ rights and information on Beijing’s crackdown against similar land grabs.

“I myself don’t farm anymore but I come from a farming family. I just can’t stand to watch them take advantage of us,” said Fang, 30, who has been hiding from authorities for months.

Villagers learned from Fang that a crackdown on illegal land grabs had supposedly shut down 400 out of 700 special economic zones in Zhejiang province, including theirs. Authorities even fired the project director and levied a heavy fine.

But Fang said local officials just removed signs advertising the zone and kept going. “They never planned to stop building, even if it is against the law,” he said. That brought peasants into the streets.

Hundreds marched to the county seat in early November, banging on traditional drums and waving the national flag. They delivered hundreds of copies of the central government’s policy on farmers’ rights to a shaken official.

Later that month, the construction crew showed up.

“We tried to stop them by blocking the construction trucks, but they kept on coming, working day and night,” said Cheng, pointing to the fields filled with heavy construction equipment and cranes. “They buried most of the cropland with sand and plugged the irrigation channels to make sure there’s no way we could farm there again.”

Riot police beat and dragged away angry villagers. Hundreds of farmers from neighboring areas came to their defense. Witnesses say at one point more than 1,000 peasants clashed with 600 police.

“The cops had helmets and batons, the villagers used their hands and rocks,” Fang said. “Dozens in our village were injured, and the cops too.”

After that, police conducted a series of raids. The first door they kicked down was Fang’s. But he was in Beijing, and his father and two brothers, who did not participate in the protests, took the blows for him.

“They thought one of his younger brothers was him, so they beat him with a metal baton, and they beat me too,” said Fang’s mother, Fang Jianchui. “His father fell on the floor, and they dragged him away.”

Authorities charged the 53-year-old man with inciting to riot and released him on bail pending a court date. Officials also shut down Fang’s motorcycle business. He has run out of money but said the villagers are collecting cash from friends and relatives for a court fight.

“They have abused the law enough,” Fang said. “All we want is a little justice.”

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Ni was recently on assignment in Xiaoxi.