Improve Institutional Rules and Develop the Secondary Market

China Accelerates Building a Unified Urban-Rural Construction Land Market

The reporter recently learned from the Ministry of Natural Resources that the natural resources system has earnestly implemented the important arrangements of the Party Central Committee, accelerated the building of a unified urban-rural construction land market, and implemented a series of new reform measures in areas such as improving the construction land market system and rules, accelerating the development of the secondary market for construction land, and steadily and orderly promoting the market-based transfer of rural collective operating construction land, achieving a series of new progress and new results.

　　The Land Market System and Rules Are Being Continuously Improved

The Decision of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China on Further Comprehensively Deepening Reform and Advancing Chinese Modernization (hereinafter referred to as the Decision) set clear requirements for optimizing land management and building a unified urban-rural construction land market.

Building a unified urban-rural construction land market means addressing problems such as incomplete and non-unified land market systems and rules, and uneven development of regional and urban-rural markets, so as to promote fair competition, reduce transaction costs, and improve the efficiency of the market in allocating land resources.

In recent years, natural resources departments have adhered to supply-side structural reform as the main line and accelerated the establishment and improvement of a nationally unified construction land market system and rules. For example, they have established a mechanism linking the increase in the scale of urban construction land with the number of agricultural migrants settling in cities, to promote people-centered new urbanization; improved the cross-regional trading mechanism for surplus indicators from the linkage between urban and rural construction land increases and decreases and for supplementary cultivated land indicators; expanded the scope of paid use of state-owned construction land, improved the secondary market for the transfer, lease, and mortgage of construction land use rights, improved the supply policy for industrial land, and supported the development of the real economy; and steadily and orderly advanced the reform of market-based transfer of rural collective operating construction land and improved market trading and regulatory rules.

In addition, in order to improve the system for total resource management and comprehensive conservation, in recent years the Ministry of Natural Resources has successively released four batches of recommended catalogs of land-saving technologies and land-saving models. The fourth batch, released in June this year, includes 38 typical cases from 26 provinces (autonomous regions and municipalities), focusing on "replacing incremental land with existing land," "replacing above-ground space with underground space," and "replacing space with capital, technology, and data," guiding all localities to further improve the level of economical and intensive land use and promote high-quality urban-rural development.

Through the joint efforts of multiple parties, in 2023, the area of construction land used per unit of GDP in China decreased by nearly 45% compared with 2012, and the total amount of cultivated land nationwide maintained net growth for the third consecutive year.

　Promoting the Revitalization of Existing Land and Inefficiently Used Land

The Decision clearly proposes accelerating the development of the secondary market for construction land, promoting mixed land development and utilization, rational conversion of uses, and revitalizing existing land and inefficiently used land.

On October 1, 2023, the Ministry of Natural Resources officially launched the national land secondary market trading service platform, providing functions in five aspects: "supply and demand information, transaction matching, public bidding transactions, contract coding, and statistical monitoring," achieving the nationwide collection of supply and demand information and promoting openness and transparency of market information, thereby enabling resource allocation on a larger scale, factor guarantees at higher efficiency, and supply-demand matching at a higher level.

The purpose of activating the secondary market is to promote the revitalization of inefficiently used existing land. Natural resources departments have continued to innovate, fully leveraged the role of market mechanisms, effectively mobilized the enthusiasm of all parties to revitalize existing land, and embarked on a new path of high-quality development that gives priority to the use of existing land. In September 2023, the Ministry of Natural Resources issued the Notice on Carrying Out Pilot Work for the Redevelopment of Inefficiently Used Land, promoting 43 cities in 15 provinces (municipalities) to carry out a four-year pilot for the redevelopment of inefficiently used land, supporting pilot cities in exploring innovative policy measures focusing on four aspects: planning coordination, land reserve support, policy incentives, and basic guarantees, and actively, steadily, vigorously, and effectively advancing the pilot work.

In response to problems such as difficulty in development, transfer, and recovery in revitalizing existing real estate land, the Ministry of Natural Resources recently, together with the National Development and Reform Commission and other departments, studied and introduced 18 policy measures in three aspects (hereinafter referred to as the "18 Measures"), adopting policies such as appropriately "relaxing, revitalizing, yielding profits, and simplifying" for existing real estate land, to support all localities in steadily handling idle existing land. Feedback from various localities shows that making good use of the "18 Measures" has achieved preliminary results in relieving enterprises of difficulties.

　　Collective Operating Construction Land Is Being Steadily and Orderly Put on the Market

The Decision emphasizes orderly advancing the reform of market-based transfer of rural collective operating construction land and improving the mechanism for distributing land value-added benefits.

Advancing the reform of market-based transfer of rural collective operating construction land, so that collective operating construction land enters the market on an equal footing with state-owned construction land and enjoys equal rights and equal prices, and creating a fairer market environment, is an important measure for building a unified urban-rural construction land market.

In March 2023, the Ministry of Natural Resources issued the Work Plan for Deepening the Pilot Reform of Market-Based Transfer of Rural Collective Operating Construction Land (hereinafter referred to as the Work Plan), fully launching a new round of pilots on the premise of compliance with territorial spatial planning, use control, and lawful acquisition.

According to statistics, in 2023, a total of 350 counties (cities, districts, and banners) nationwide completed pilot market-based transfers of rural collective operating construction land involving 719 parcels, with a land area of 13,100 mu, total transaction value of 18.52 billion yuan, value-added benefit adjustment funds paid of 2.298 billion yuan, 9.176 billion yuan retained by rural collective economic organizations, and 1.083 billion yuan distributed to individual farmers.

Various pilot areas, in accordance with the Work Plan, revitalized idle existing construction land and gave priority to supporting rural revitalization and the integrated development of the primary, secondary, and tertiary industries in rural areas. In this process, pilot areas explored and established trading rules and service supervision systems for the rural collective operating construction land market, formed a series of institutional achievements in areas such as market entry services and income distribution, enhanced the ability to guarantee land for rural industrial development, and increased the property income of rural collective economic organizations and farmers.