Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao (溫家寶) vowed yesterday to crack down on seizures of farmland for redevelopment -- a source of rising rural anger -- as the National People's Congress (NPC) endorsed a five-year plan to close the growing and volatile gap between rich and poor.
But Wen stopped short of saying whether the communist government might allow farmers to own land outright.
Chinese leaders are trying to defuse increasingly violent rural protests over complaints that local officials are seizing land to build shopping malls, factories and other projects and are failing to pay adequate compensation.
"We must exercise and enforce the strictest land protection system," Wen said at news conference on the closing day of the ceremonial parliament's 10-day annual session.
The premier said proceeds from land transfers should go to farmers. He promised to "mete out harsh punishment" to officials who violate the law in seizing farmland.
But the premier didn't announce any new initiatives. And he failed to answer a reporter's question about whether farmers would be allowed to own land for the first time since the 1950s -- a step that Chinese researchers say could improve their ability to protect their own rights.
The five-year plan endorsed by the parliament calls for billions of dollars of new spending this year on rural schools, healthcare, roads and aid to farmers.
The 2,891-member NPC, which routinely passes policies already decided by the government, voted by a more than 97 percent margin to approve Wen's report on plans for this year and the five-year economic development plan.
The plan is part of a long-term strategy by Communist Party leaders to spread prosperity to the countryside -- home to some 800 million people -- and others who have been left behind in two decades of breakneck growth.
It calls for economic growth of 8 percent this year -- lower than projected by outside economists -- and an annual average of 7.5 percent over the next five years.
In an unusual display of ideological discord, leaders last week withdrew a proposed law on property rights, citing disagreements about its contents and saying it required more work.
Wen also pledged to improve environmental protection -- an issue with new urgency for the government following a series of industrial disasters that have poisoned rivers and threatened water supplies for millions of people.
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