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Province announces trial of public land market reform

Farmers allowed to mortgage and trade control of family plots

A Chinese region confirmed it will experiment with a "market" in publicly owned rural land in what could become one of China's most radical reforms for 35 years.

The Anhui provincial government issued a document saying it would allow farmers to mortgage and transfer control of their state-owned plots in 20 rural districts.

It said rights to the plots could be transferred, sublet, mortgaged or turned into business shares - which could result in bigger, more efficient farms.

There is no private land ownership in China, with all urban land under state ownership and rural land under collective ownership overseen by village officials.

That will not change in Anhui, but farmers will be given more flexibility in how their allotted land is used.

"The goal is to activate a land market - to let the land flow," said rural development expert Tan Shuhao at Renmin University in Beijing.

"The rural land policy must change, because it is the root of the wealth disparity between urban and rural populations."

Following a key meeting to set economic policy for the coming decade, Communist Party leaders pledged last week to give rural residents greater property rights and to close the gap between rural and urban residents.

The statements gave no details on how it would be done.

Policy changes in China often come as a result of small-scale experiments carried out by local officials acting on signals from national leaders.

Successful experiments - those that fulfil goals without sparking social instability - are adopted.

Anhui also spearheaded land reforms in the late 1970s. The provincial government said it wants to unlock the potential of rural land more effectively.

It wants to transform traditional small-plot, family farming into more productive agricultural businesses and see collectively owned non-agricultural land used for commerce, tourism or rural communities.

Anhui plans to survey its land to identify the current holder of rights over every plot by the end of 2015.

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