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Digital Inclusion, Local Government
China extends rural land registration pilot
After the successful completion of the first phase of the pilot GIS-based land registration project covering two villager groups, China has signed a contract for a second phase, involving two to three counties in the eastern Anhui province.
The Rural Land Registration and Certification Project, as the programme is called, will receive a US$478,440 grant from the US Trade and Development Agency (USTDA). The funding will also be matched with more than US$580,000 contributions from other participating entities.
Participating companies will support the Anhui Provincial Agricultural Commission by defining land registry system requirements, developing software configurations, providing public outreach and training stakeholders.
Land Registration System, an application developed by International Land Systems based on ESRI’s ArcGIS platform, will be used in the implementation.
Enabling rural residents to have the same, or near equal certificates of land ownership as urban residents, the project carries immense significance and is expected to drastically increase the value of their land.
Thirty years since the rural land reform which parcelled out arable land to individual households from collectives on contractual basis, many of the country’s hundreds of millions of farmers still do not possess any written documentation – a Rural Land Contracting Right Certificate or a Rural Land Contracting Contract – to confirm their legal rights to the land. Existing certificates face issues of inaccuracy and incompleteness. As a result, land rights are often violated and disputes are commonplace.
Under this pretext, the central government was prompted to use GIS to collect and map out land registration data.
The first phase of the project was initiated in 2005, and two villager groups in Shitang Township, Feidong County of Anhui Province were identified for the first, small-scale pilot. In total 78 rural households with 787 land parcels were involved in this phase.
The project involved baseline survey and interview of rural residents, conducted by China Agricultural University. The institution’s Centre for Rural Development Policy also carried out training of the villages for them to understand the initiative and its directions.
And finally cadastral information was collected and input into the registration system, after land surveying, cadastral surveying and land dispute adjudication.
The Rural Land Registration Certification Project contract was signed earlier this month by Vice Minister of Commerce for China, Ma Xiuhong as well as Geoffrey Jackson, the USTDA Director of Policy and Programme. The signing ceremony was part of the visit of a delegation led by Wu Bangguo, Chairman of the National People’s Congress of China.
The project is expected to be rolled out nationwide after a few pilot projects in different areas with varied landscapes.
“The number of households and parcels, as well as the different conditions on the ground of a county, is essential for decision-makers to discover issues and solutions for all of rural China,” says Dr Yang Zhao, Deputy Director, General Office of Central Leading Group on Rural Affairs and the Director of the registration project.
“The selected county or counties must issue rules to make the registration official with real legal force; otherwise, the impact will be greatly diminished,” he adds.
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