Construction land expansion and cultivated land protection in urbanizing China: Insights from national land surveys, 1996–2006

Abstract

The remarkable construction land development in urbanizing China has been rarely investigated within the context of the multi-track urbanization process and its relationship with farmland protection has remained vague because of the lack of accurate and reliable data. To fill these gaps, this research analyzed systematic data from the 1996 land survey and the land use change surveys that were conducted annually in the subsequent decade. Driven mainly by the widespread establishment and continuous expansion of economic development zones (EDZs), construction land in China expanded by 2.04 million hectares in 2001–2006, which was approximately twice of that in the previous half-decade. Cities have not grown faster than towns until recently. In rapidly urbanizing China, rural construction land did not shrink but expanded rapidly, especially in the western provinces with a decreasing rural population. Spatially, the eastern coast has maintained its leading position in the construction land distribution and expansion in China; however, the inland regions have contributed an increasing share of national land development. Land survey data did not support the prevailing view that closely connected farmland loss with construction land growth, but showed that only less than 20% of the lost farmland was converted to construction sites. Moreover, this farmland was occupied mostly by EDZs, followed by transportation and rural settlements, whereas the most frequently criticized city and town expansion contributed the least. In this sense, the real challenge of urbanization to farmland protection lies not in the necessary growth of urban areas, but in the irrational expansion of rural settlements that carry increasingly fewer people. Chinese land polices that aim to control construction land growth and prevent cultivated land loss were proved to be a double failure. The control–protection relationship is not simply “control for protection,” as claimed in official discourse; rather, farmland protection is also a slogan and excuse used by the government to restrain the excessive land expropriation in the urban fringe to avoid or mitigate farmland degradation, urban land waste, and social unrest. After reexamining the Chinese urbanization model dominated by the massive floating population and strict and rigid control over urban expansion, we call for more efforts to develop a trans-regional linkage between urban and rural construction land management, which may be a reasonable and effective means for sustainable land development in China.