Red brick ban to save land

Authorities look set to bring the two-thousand-year history of Chinese brickmaking to end when they impose stiff new regulations to prevent soil degradation by introducing more energy-efficient building materials.

China's Economic and Trade Commission, last week, added 10 more provincial capitals, including Xian, Wuhan and Kunming, to a list of 170 cities where the bricks will be banned outright by June 2003. In Beijing, the ban will be in place early next year, according to Beijing-based Global Times.

There are 120,000 brick kilns in China and they destroy hundreds of thousands of acres of potentially arable land. Brick houses rob the nation of agricultural land.

Chinese experts told Global Times that a building with floor space of 10,000 square metres would take 3.3 acres of land to provide enough bricks. The venerable old red brick still accounts for an incredible 95 per cent of China's building materials.

The county of Jiashan in Zhejiang province in eastern China became famous by providing high-quality bricks during Beijing's imperial past thanks to its brick-making techniques that have improved over several centuries.

A small city in the county has also paid the price for that fame. Land ownership per capita dropped from 2.24 acres half a century ago to less than one acre by the end of 1998. The city now faces a major flooding threat because of the excessive amount of earth removed over the years.