Rocketing land prices, a widening wealth gap and a growing awareness of human rights are behind a wave of land disputes across southern China, analysts said.
Since the late 1970s, Guangdong Province has been attracting huge foreign investment and transforming itself from an economic backwater into one of the country's richest provinces.
But the success has fueled a rising tide of unrest among farmers who complain their land, often their only asset, has been illegally seized by local officials to build roads, factories and residential buildings.
"The money often doesn't go into the farmers' pocket," said Cheng Yuk-shing (
"That's why the number of land disputes is increasing and the problems are getting more serious, because they don't get enough compensation."
Over the past decade, 40 million farmers have lost their land to urbanization, with another 15 million to suffer a similar fate over the next five years, according to the Ministry of Labor and Social Security.
Official figures show there were 87,000 protests, riots and other "mass incidents," often related to land loss, in 2005.
Analysts said the problem was particularly acute in the manufacturing belt around the Pearl River delta in the south of Guangdong where swift industrial and urban development have put heavy pressure on farmland.
In Guangzhou, capital of the province which has been one of the fastest growing regions in the world for more than two decades, forced evictions have become the largest cause of social unrest, officials said.
Police statistics showed that more than 850 protests took place in 2004, involving an estimated total of over 50,000 people.
The enormous demand for land has pushed real estate prices to nearly 50 percent above the level of five years ago.
This has sparked the rebellious instincts of the villagers, who accuse local officials of taking over the land at little or even no cost and then selling it at market prices.
They have received inadequate compensation while the officials have swallowed huge windfall profits, causing a yawning income gap to widen even further, they claimed.
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