Decision of the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress to Amend the Land Administration Law of the People's Republic of China and the Urban Real Estate Administration Law of the People's Republic of China.

The Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress decided to adopt a comprehensive amendment to the country’s primary land law. The Amendment to the Land Administration Law, consisting of 35 sections, aims to clarify land property rights, improve administration, and regulate government land requisition.
The main focuses of the Amendment are reforms in the areas of rural land expropriation, the marketization of rural collective construction land, the homestead land system, and establishment of a stringent farmland protection system.
The revised Law specifies that the rural land may be expropriated for the purposes of military or diplomacy; infrastructure construction organized by the government; the government’s public welfare undertakings; and the alleviation of poverty and relocation of the poor. Where a local people's government at or above the county level intends to apply for the acquisition of land, it shall carry out the investigation of the status quo of the land to be expropriated and the risk assessment of social stability, and shall make an announcement of the scope of the land to be expropriated, the status quo of the land, the purpose of the land expropriation, the compensation standard, the way of resettlement and social security for opinions of villagers' committees and other interested parties.
The previous Land Administration Law states that there should be no transfer or leasing of the right to use land collectively owned by farmers. The revised Land Law allows collective land for for-profit construction in a rural area to be transferred to others or leased out by landowners. These transactions must be approved by a villagers’ committee or village meeting.
The revised Law further allows rural villagers who have moved into the cities to voluntarily surrender their rural homestead with due compensation, which allows villages to otherwise utilize the surrendered land and residence.
In addition, the term “basic farmland” in the previous Law has been replaced by “basic permanent farmland” in the revised Law. Essential national projects that cannot avoid occupying any basic permanent farmland must be preapproved by the State Council. The people's governments of at provincial level shall strictly implement the comprehensive plans for land utilization and the annual plans for land utilization, and adopt measures to ensure that both the total amount and the quality of arable land within their respective administrative regions are not reduced.
An Amendment to the Urban Real Estate Administration Law is also adopted. Article 9 is amended to read: "Only after a piece of collectively owned land within an urban planning area is changed into state-owned land by expropriation according to the law may the right to use such state-owned land be assigned for value, except as otherwise provided for by laws."