Guangdong officials say they're waiting for central policy
Officials in South China's Guangdong Province have claimed that local governments have no right to make policies to deal with the issue of land use after owners' fixed-term rights expire, according to a report by the Guangzhou-based Information Times newspaper on Wednesday.
"The Guangdong local land and resource department is awaiting policies from the central government," Tu Gaokun, deputy director of the Department of Land and Resource of Guangdong Province, said on Tuesday, according to the report.
On Tuesday, authorities in Shenzhen, Guangdong Province announced the conditions for land use renewals.
Rights for land transferred before September 18, 1995 will be renewed for the maximum term based on the specific use without paying an additional fee, according to a statement posted Tuesday on the Sina Weibo account of the Urban Planning, Land and Resources Commission of Shenzhen.
The maximum term for the use of land in China is 70 years for housing, 50 year for industrial facilities, and 40 years for tourism and entertainment purposes.
However, in some cases, land use rights were only granted for 20 years.
In those cases, the rights will have to be renewed. However, a new contract must be signed and a fixed fee is also paid, according to the city authority.
The city is still studying how to deal with land transferred after September 18, 1995, the statement said.
Some homeowners in Wenzhou, East China's Zhejiang Province are facing the problem of the expiration of rights granted for 20 years, media reports have said.
These homeowners have to pay a large amount of land transfer fees to maintain their rights, although Xinhua News Agency reported on Sunday that some published reports have contained "misunderstandings" over how much the fees are.
But the land rights issue has sparked heated debate nationwide, with many homeowners wondering what will happen when their current 70-year rights end.
"There's no need for homeowners to worry about the issue. The central government won't reclaim the land immediately," Xue Jianxiong, president of Youtaocheng Co, a Shanghai-based real estate agency, told the Global Times on Wednesday.
China's Property Law says that the usage rights will be renewed automatically when they expire.
But there are no specific laws or regulations to explain how this happens or what fees must be paid.
With more cities in China set to face the problem of the expiration of rights granted for 20 years, many experts are calling for the central government to announce regulations as soon as possible to guide local governments.
Solutions can not be uniform. Instead, they need to be based on the different situations of local governments, said Xue.
