Social discontent poses a greater challenge to Guangdong than the economic risks the province faces, newly elected governor Zhu Xiaodan said yesterday.
Guangdong would address land rights and land certification issues this year, and also enshrine farmers' land rights in law to ease social conflicts over the requisitioning of rural land, Zhu promised yesterday at his first press conference as governor after the close of the annual meeting of the provincial people's congress.
Zhu, 58, was elected yesterday afternoon by 740 votes to three. He bowed deeply to the congress when his appointment was announced.
He said the root cause of land requisition problems was that some officials did not abide by the law and ignored farmers' interests.
'Social conflicts will build up, become more acute, and even evolve into mass incidents [a mainland euphemism for protests] if not dealt with properly,' he said, insisting that the way to solve such conflicts was by improving the legal system, protecting people's interests by law and setting emergency response systems.
He also highlighted the economic challenges facing Guangdong and vowed to pursue steady foreign trade growth, deeper co-operation between Guangdong and Hong Kong and increased domestic demand.
'Foreign trade growth in Guangdong has been slowing month by month since August, from 14.7 per cent in July to 5.4 per cent in December,' he said, adding that he expects imports to grow by 8.5 per cent and exports by 7 per cent this year.