China goes farming while India welomes SEZs

Beijing, Dec 18: China has banned the construction of golf courses, luxury homes and race courses on undeveloped land to protect the country's fast-shrinking farmland, the official Xinhua news agency said today.

Large commercial facilities including furniture factories, entertainment centres and even cemeteries will be restricted and completely banned on farmland, the report said, citing new regulations published by Beijing.

China has low per-capita amounts of arable land with which to feed its vast population, and the economic boom of the last two decades has triggered a rush to the cities and has encouraged the construction of factories, which has eaten into the amount of land available for farming.

Xinhua in November took a swing at China's fast-multiplying golf courses, saying their construction threatened scarce land, exacerbated poverty and was out of line with the government's emphasis on sustainable development.

Pressure on land supply is also driving up property prices, leading to discontent among a new urban middle-class that is finding it hard to move up the property ladder.

The new regulations replace a set published in 1999, Xinhua said.

Reuters

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