报告指出，按照2008年10月中国国土资源部发布的“全国土地利用总体规画纲要”，2000年至2030年间，中国占用耕地将超过5,450万亩，因此造成的失地农民将达到1.1亿人左右。

城市土地严重浪费

该报告并且指出，在大规模征地的同时，城市土地浪费与低效能利用现象十分严重。据“全国土地利用总体规画纲要”，中国大陆全境有26.67万公顷的土地被闲置。因此，征地规模确实大于实际的土地需求。

针对这种大规模民失地的现象，北京经济学家仲大军表示：“失地农民也分几种情况。有的失地农民一下子就有钱了，阔得不得了。有的失地农民就陷入困境。各地方是不一样的。你说像北京周边有些农民，都在盼望失地。一旦土地或者房舍重建，他们马上就变成百万、千万富翁。可是在下边一些省或县地区，很多农民一旦失地就陷入非常贫困的窘境。其实这个问题也不是现在的问题，已经是个一、二十年来的老问题了。”

中国社会转型关键

中国社科院的这份报告统计，农民陈情中有60%与土地有关，其中30%又跟征地有关。在失地农民中，有60%表示生活困难，有81%担心未来生活。因此，如何处理大量农民失地的问题，将成为中国社会转型的一个关键。

仲大军表示：“那就要看中国的工业发展能不能吸收适当的农业人口，把这些失地农民转换成工业或服务业的就业人口，从原来的第一产业——农业产业进入工业或服务业这个领域。如果中国能够比较好地进行这样一个产业转换，那么失地农民可能过上城市生活，摆脱过去那种艰苦的农业劳动，未尝不是一件好事。”

但是，仲大军强调，就目前来说，大部份失地农民是依靠征地的补偿金和其他救济金来或者打零工来过活，因此，解决这个问题还需要各方更多的努力。

另据中国国家统计局对失地农户的抽样调查，征地后安置就业的仅占百分之2点7；外出务工的占24.8%；经营二三产业的占27.3%；空闲在家的约占20％。

责任编辑：叶清青

http://www.epochtimes.com/gb/11/8/10/n3339802.htm

Fifty Million Chinese Farmers Had Land Stolen

Chinese think tank report reveals numbers behind land grabs

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Related articles: China > Society

Up to 50 million farmers have had their lands taken, and most are not satisfied with the compensation they’re given, according to a recent Chinese think tank study. (The Epoch Times)

Between 40 and 50 million Chinese farmers have lost their farmland since Deng Xiaoping’s economic reforms began in the late 1970s, according to a recent report from the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (CASS). The number is increasing at a rate of three million farmers per year, and will reach 110 million around 2030.

The report, titled “China Urban Development Report of 2011″ and published by the Institute for Urban and Environmental Studies of CASS, states that large areas of farmland have been and are being expropriated as China’s industrialization and urbanization accelerates.

According to the directive “national land use planning” published by the Ministry of Land and Resources in October 2008, from the years 2000 to 2030, over 8.6 million acres of farmland will be expropriated and over 100 million farmers will lose their land.

The report also states that, while farmland is being lost, there is a serious trend of urban land being insufficiently utilized. According to the “national land use planning” directive, there are about 657,000 acres of unused land in China. This leads to the conclusion that the scale of land expropriation is greater than the actual need.

Regarding the farmers who lost their land, the official news website Red Net (rednet.cn) of Hunan Province reported a survey of 132 households on the issue on March 29. It stated that 97 percent of farmers are not satisfied with the compensation.

The standard compensation rate to the farmer for commercial land use is about US$20,000 to US$35,000 per acre. But this farmland is often situated in a newly developed urban area, which could fetch over 10 times its current value.

The Director of the State Council’s Development Research Center, Han Jun, said that, since the start of economic reforms to 2003, the Chinese regime has taken US$312.8 billion from farmers by expropriating farmland at a low price and then reselling it at a high price.

The Red Net survey also stated that 85.6 percent of farmers do not have any kind of social security or insurance, and that only 12 percent have medical insurance. When asked what they fear the most, 15.9 percent said not having medical insurance, 27.3 percent said not having retirement insurance and 75 percent said unemployment.

The farmers who lost their land have no stable jobs and income. After losing their ownership, rights to use and derive an income from their farmland, they have no financial security.

Xu Zhiyong, a faculty member at the Beijing Post and Telecommunications University, told China Youth Daily: “the dispute arising from farmland expropriation is not a regional problem. It exists in almost every big and small city, county, and township.”

According to statistics given in the CASS report, among the farmers who appeal to higher authorities for help, 60 percent of the appeals are related to the farmland, and 30 percent are related to land expropriation.

Among farmers who lost their land, 60 percent of them said that they are in a state of economic hardship, and 81 percent are worried about their future livelihoods.

According to a random sample of 2,942 farmers who lost their land, the National Bureau of Statistics of China found that there are only 2.7 percent who received employment after expropriation; 24.8 percent went out to look for work on their own; 27.3 percent have opened a small business; and 20 percent stays at home, unemployed.

Sometimes, those who have had their land taken from them have responded violently.

In May a series of explosions hit Fuzhou City, Jiangxi Province, after Qian Mingqi, 52, failed to obtain redress for land that was expropriated but for which he was never properly compensated. After a decade of unsuccessfully attempting to get proper compensation (he says his losses were up to two million yuan, or around US$300,000), he set up a Sina Weibo account documenting his final thoughts, and proceeded to make fertilizer bombs.

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He said that he was left with no choice. “I wanted to take genuine action to get rid of the bad guys for the people,” Qian said. He was killed in one of the blasts.

In other cases people have climbed atop their house roofs and set themselves on fire. In yet other cases people have used violence against the gangs of thugs that are hired by local officials to carry out the eviction and demolition work that is often involved in land expropriation.

Read the original Chinese article.

chinareports@epochtimes.com

Tang Jingling and Yao Lifa are pictured before being detained. The former is a civil rights lawyer, the latter an activist who has closely followed the election of “independent candidates” for local positions in the People’s Congress. (RFA)

Human rights lawyers and activists who were rounded up months ago, when security forces were in the grips of paranoia about a Chinese Jasmine Revolution, are now slowly being released from their extralegal detentions. And they have harrowing tales to tell.

One of those people is Tang Jitian, a lawyer who topped off his career as a legal gadfly with an attempt to defend Falun Gong practitioners in April of 2010, with colleague Liu Wei. In May of that year he got a phone call informing him that he would never practice law in China again.

But that was only the beginning of the Chinese state’s reprisals. Already identified as a troublemaker, he was among the up to 100 rights defenders and civil rightslawyers sequestered in the massive crackdown that began in February of this year.

“[Tang] … was tortured most seriously among the lawyers who have dedicated themselves to defending the rights of minorities in China,” a woman who identified herself as “Ada” posted to her blog in the early morning of Aug. 10. She also noted that Tang can no longer earn an income as a lawyer.

Someone familiar with Tang’s situation, who spoke to New Tang Dynasty TV on condition of anonymity, said that the man did indeed suffer torture. This person said, “In February, they [domestic security officers] burned him with high-voltage electrical bulbs for many days, and then used very cold air to freeze him until he suffered from pneumonia and tuberculosis.”

The source added, “His weight dropped from about 198 pounds to less than 135.”

Li Tiantian, also a lawyer who was detained and is familiar with the treatment of many of her colleagues, told NTD that Tang Jitian was stripped naked and tied to a chair, while chilled air was blown on him; she said that law professor Teng Biao, also one of those targeted, was handcuffed around the clock.

She also said she had seen Jiang Tianyong, another lawyer who had apparently been brutalized. “He told me that he was seated in a chair in one posture all day long, and was not allowed to move. It was indeed cruel torture.”

Human right lawyer Tang Jitian (Courtesy of Mr. Tang)

He remarked wryly: “Maybe it was the doctor’s orders. They said I shouldn’t sleep too much, only two or three hours a night … they said if you sleep too much at once, you might get a heart problem.” He said he ended up with shaking hands and didn’t recover until April.

After Tang was arrested his wife, Wang Yanfang, was informed by public security officers that her husband had been involved in the crime of “inciting subversion of state power,” a nebulous charge frequently used againstlawyers and others who overstep the line.

On Aug. 2 police dismissed the case and lifted the house arrest.

According to the Hong Kong-based Chinese Human Rights Defenders, before the lifting of the house arrest, the police had asked Tang Jingling not to contact friends, nor accept interviews. Tang said that he would not promise what he could not fulfill.

Yao Lifa, an activist who has taken an interest in the election of “independent candidates” to local Party Congresses, was also targeted. He was forcefully placed in a “study class” in a building in early July, and jumped from the window to escape security forces. He dislocated a disc in his lower back in the leap, and was left hobbling. He was later captured by security forces in Beijing, according to RFA.

After recent outbursts of violence in Xinjiang, in far western China, Chinese communist authorities dispatched an “elite” anti-terrorism squad to carry out “anti-terrorist missions” on Saturday.

China’s state media reported that the “Snow Leopard Commando Unit” will enter Southern Xinjiang, while troop deployments in other areas of Xinjiang will be extended as part of the “anti-terrorism operation.”

The move is seen as part of the regime’s suppression and intimidation of Uyghurs, however. Dilxat Raxit, a spokesman for the World Uyghur Congress (WUC), criticized the regime for exerting psychological and political intimidation against Uyghurs under the banner of anti-terrorism. But doing so will only deepen the Uighurs’ discontentment, he told The Epoch Times.

Twenty “stability maintenance patrol vehicles” were deployed in Urumqi, the capital of Xinjiang, on Aug. 9 and 10, according to iyaxin.com, a news portal in Xinjiang.

A motorcade of police, paramilitary officers, and other special-forces drove through the streets of Kuqa in Xinjiang, making a prominent show of the regime’s military strength.

A man calling himself only Gao, a resident of Northern Xinjiang, told The Epoch Times that, besides military stationing in Xinjiang, Domestic Security officers and military police also stopped and questioned Uighur on streets. Domestic Security forces are a much-feared unit that surveil and crack down on Chinese dissidents, often using extralegal and brutal means.

The authorities also extended the anti-terrorism operation to the grassroots, recruiting civilian informers.

Hu Jun, a human rights activist in Xinjiang, told The Epoch Times that the authorities are operating a defense alliance of the people in Xinjiang.Military police patrol the streets around-the-clock and helicopters hover over the city constantly. People feel the situation is very tense, he said.

Three incidents of violence broke out in Xinjiang’s Hotan and Kashgar last month, among which the two incidents in Kashgar at the end of July left at least 20 people dead.

Beijing blames terrorists for the violence, but overseas Uyghur groups criticize the Chinese regime’s coercive and restrictive ethnic policies.

Dilxat Raxit said the regime’s repression has made Uyghurs feel unsafe at home, because Chinese security forces can make forced entry into people’s houses, and take people away for detention at any time, without going through any procedures.

Several recent incidents of assault highlight the continuous perils investigative reporters in China face in their daily work.

Conditions for reporters in China are harsh. Not only are journalists under the constant watchful eye of the regime’s Central Propaganda Department, which can have them demoted or fired for reporting inconvenient news, reporters also face violence from private enterprises that try to prevent negative news about their news operations from getting out.

Even state propaganda channels are sometimes not immune. On Aug. 8, several reporters from the Communist Party’s television mouthpiece CCTV said they were attacked and had their camera smashed by dozens of employees at the Fujia Dahua Petrochemical Company in Dalian City, Liaoning Province, where they went to investigate a possible toxic chemical leak.

Reports said that management had instructed employees to beat up the reporters.

Fujia Dahua is a private enterprise, but political connections can be complicated and far-reaching, possibly making this a “sensitive case” and a taboo for investigative reporters.

Corruption is generally behind such cases, as Chinese businessmen and officials work together to protect their interests.

Some bloggers speculated, “Some big shots must be behind the Fujian Dahua company.”

The truth is hard to come by in China, but some brave Chinese reporters are still probing for it, albeit at a cost.

“Journalists in China are constantly under physical threat and danger,” Meng Lang, cofounder of Independent Chinese PEN Center told Voice of America (VOA) in an Aug. 5 report.

“The interference with journalists’ rights to interview people and conduct investigations in China has become increasingly more severe,” he said.

On Aug. 3, three reporters from Guangzhou Daily and Southern Metropolis Daily were attacked while reporting a fire in a factory in Foshan City, Guangdong Province, according to VOA.

A security guard let them in, saying a manager would talk to them. But once inside the factory the reporters were surrounded by a gang of men, who accused them of breaking into private property.

On the same day, two reporters from a TV station in Yichuan City, Jiangxi Province were also violently assaulted while shooting news of a road surface collapse caused by a construction company’s demolition work.

The company’s staff smashed the reporter’s camera and attacked them with safety helmets and bricks. Both reporters were hospitalized.

A mangled train car is hoisted away after the deadly Wenzhou collision. (Getty Images)

A team looking into the causes of the July 23 bullet train collision near Wenzhou has determined that “it was a tragic accident that should never have happened and could absolutely have been prevented and avoided.” Another academic expert wonders why the line was not completely shut down since design flaws have been found.

Speaking at the investigative team’s third meeting on Aug. 11, Luo Lin, team leader and employee with the State Work Safety Administration, said that serious defects in the system’s design which led to equipment failure had been uncovered. Additional problems brought to light include poor safety management and a lack of emergency response procedures.

The Beijing Times reports that experts had previously performed numerous experiments and simulations in search of the reasons for the train crash. Meanwhile, engineering analyses have also been made on the effects of lightning strikes and the black box recorder.

The Ministry of Railways announced its decision on Aug. 11 to lower the operating speed for bullet trains. The Shanghai-Hangzhou High Speed Railway with a designed speed of 223 miles per hour would be lowered to 186 mph, while the Hangzhou-Fuzhou-Shenzhen Passenger Dedicated Line with a designed speed of 155 mph would operate at 124 mph. Ticket prices would be decreased by five percent.

Wang Chengli, a professor in the Institute of Urban Rail Transit of Central South University in Changsha, told New Tang Dynasty TV: “Since the Ministry of Railways has admitted that there are serious defects in the design, the passenger line should be suspended so that allequipment can be replaced. Only when all problems are resolved should the line operate again.”

He believes that a minor external cause could trigger a serious tragedy, and that given the risk, the bullet train is like a “time bomb.”

chinareports@epochtimes.com

http://www.theepochtimes.com/n2/china-news/bullet-train-crash-absolutely-avoidable-investigators-find-60320.html

UNDER SPOTLIGHT: Beijing’s Forbidden City, which was the Chinese imperial palace from the mid-Ming Dynasty to the end of the Qing Dynasty, has been recently put under the public spotlight by a slew of scandals and cover-ups. (Feng Li/Getty Images)

From an embarrassing theft by a lone burglar to an awkward attempt at concealing a broken antique, Beijing’s 600-year-old Forbidden City has been plagued with a slew of scandals recently, putting the nation’s most esteemed cultural icon under a harsh public spotlight.

It all began with what seemed like an isolated, but nevertheless shocking incident when a 27-year-old out-of-towner, on the night of May 8, slipped into the heart of the Forbidden City, known as the Palace Museum, despite the supposedly impenetrable alarm and camera systems. He snatched jewelry boxes and purses worth millions of dollars, climbed over a 33-foot-high wall, and escaped a security guard.

The museum’s embarrassed government-appointed officials were put in a difficult position: they had to explain to the Chinese public that the 1,600 antitheft alarms and 3,700 closed-circuit television cameras had apparently failed to prevent the straightforward theft. Further, they had to explain that the stolen objects were not even fully insured, since the museum had never believed it was possible for a thief to break in.

Dissatisfied netizens and bloggers, followed by the official press, responded by uncovering a string of other management blunders; these were met with more temporizing.

Perhaps the most serious allegations were sparked from a July 30 microblog post claiming that a precious Song Dynasty porcelain plate broke into six pieces on July 4, when a laboratory researcher crushed it while examining it with a device. Even though the Palace Museum confirmed the news the next day, the Chinese public was outraged by how museum officials had kept the news from the public for nearly a month.

With all the scrutiny the museum was under, it was no surprise when a China Youth Daily article dug up records of an illegal auctioning of five pieces of the museum’s ancient calligraphy six years ago; yet another allegation denied by museum officials.

While museums are strictly prohibited from selling any of their collections under China’s cultural protection laws, the Palace Museum got around it by saying that it had never bought the calligraphy works because the funds used were not offered and approved by superior departments, according to the Global Times, an English language tabloid under the Communist Party’s official mouthpiece, People’s Daily.

But the denial did little to save the museum from its image crisis; the Chinese business magazine Caixin followed up with reports about the museum’s utter failure to control pests, and its ticketing scams.

The magazine said that termites initially found feasting in parts of the palace’s nearly 1,000 buildings in 2006 were rediscovered recently, prompting some experts to conclude that not only did the museum’s five years of pest controls fail, but the insects could eat the Forbidden City to the ground if they are not checked soon.

Caixin also reported that the museum paid 100,000 yuan (US$15,520) to a blackmailer to cover up a scandal in which security guards and tour guides were said to have embezzled the museum’s entrance ticket income, an incident also earnestly denied by officials.

Museum guards allowed visitors to enter the museum without buying tickets, while tour guides would later collect the ticket money from the visitors; they’d then split the lucre with the guards instead of turning it to the Ministry of Finance.