Official affirms principle of collective land

Beijing will uphold the collective ownership of land and will not allow any form of privatisation, a senior Communist Party official said yesterday.

Zheng Xinli, deputy director of the Central Committee's Policy Research Office, said collective ownership of rural land was clearly stipulated in the constitution and was an integral part of socialism.

He said China had learned a costly lesson from history and would not allow privatisation of rural land again.

'For thousands of years, private ownership of the land was recognised and practised in China,' he said. 'The result was that the land eventually became concentrated in a few hands. Most farmers had no land and had to struggle for a living.'

He said collective ownership was the best way to use land.

Farmers now had the right to use land but not to own it, Mr Zheng said, although leaders at the party congress in October had discussed allowing farmers to sell land-use rights to other farmers.

This would ensure farmland remained in the hands of farmers but allowed flexibility for surplus rural labour to transfer to the manufacturing industry.