The sequelae of Yangzhou's gardening
China News Weekly reporter/Su Jiede
Published in the 968th issue of China News Weekly on October 19, 2020
On September 17, the Ministry of Natural Resources notified the public that it decided to list 11 land violation cases and publicly urge the provincial natural resources authorities to investigate and deal with them in accordance with the law and accept social supervision.
The illegal occupation of land in Yangzhou parks is one of 11 cases.
The Ministry of Natural Resources disclosed that since July 2014, Yangzhou City has successively occupied 60.54 hectares (908.02 acres) without approval to build 13 parks including Liaojiagou City Central Park, including 43.63 hectares (654.47 acres) of arable land.
The park is the city card of Yangzhou, and more than 350 parks have been built.
According to local official descriptions, Yangzhou has formed a pattern of walking, cycling, and driving to a park within 10 minutes.
The difference between Liaojiagou Urban Central Park and hundreds of other parks in Yangzhou is that Liaojiagou is Yangzhou's "mother river", connecting the Yangtze River system and the Huai River system, and is also one of Yangzhou's drinking water sources.
What's more special is that Yangzhou City is going east to build a new city to create a new city center. This park is the core of the new city center.
The Propaganda Department of the Yangzhou Municipal Party Committee stated in a written reply to China News Weekly that “the Yangzhou Municipal Party Committee and the Municipal Government attached great importance to this case and immediately held a meeting to conduct special studies, emphasizing comprehensive investigation and benchmarking and rectification.” At present, It has organized the demolition of nearly 50 acres of illegally occupied buildings (structures) in parks such as Han Wanhe, Folk Song Minle, Liaojiagou East Park, and transplanted some of the trees that illegally occupied permanent basic farmland for tree planting and greening. The land after that was reclaimed to restore farming conditions.
The original intention of the land occupation is for environmental improvement
The time when Yangzhou set off a boom in park construction was mainly from 2014 to 2019. The illegal act notified by the Ministry of Natural Resources also occurred during this time period.
"Listing supervision" is a top-down supervision method.
In June 2020, the Ministry of Natural Resources issued the "Measures for the Ministry of Natural Resources to Supervise and Announce Cases of Violation of Laws and Regulations", which has upgraded the investigation and crackdown on illegal land use.
Being listed as one of the "listed supervision" cases means that the case is a "major and typical violation of laws and regulations" in the field of natural resources.
A department head of the Yangzhou Natural Resources Bureau told China News Weekly that in early August this year, the Nanjing Bureau of the National Natural Resources Inspectorate came to Yangzhou to investigate. "This investigation is much stricter than before. After the investigators came to Yangzhou, they asked the land and resources department Provide ledger information and field investigations. By comparing the map spots in the second half of 2014, it was found that the occupation of cultivated land was not approved and the land acquisition procedures were not fulfilled." One month later, the illegal land use in Liaojiagou Central Park was taken by natural resources. Ministry listed for supervision.
Liaojiagou has a long history. It was a small ditch that could be jumped over in the Ming Dynasty. After the floods in the early Qing Dynasty, the river widened.
After the founding of New China, it became an important water source in Yangzhou.
In 2014, the Yangzhou Municipal Government built the Liaojiagou Urban Central Park on both sides of the river. As one of the 30 major urban construction projects led by the Yangzhou Municipal Government, the total planned investment is 1.6 billion yuan and the planned total area is about 10.7 square kilometers. The water area is about 4.9 square kilometers and 5.8 square kilometers respectively.
Yangzhou City’s reply to China News Weekly stated that the case being supervised by the Ministry of Natural Resources this time involved 13 parks in Guangling District, Jiangdu District, and Eco-Tech New City in Yangzhou City.
Most of the above-mentioned parks are located at the junction of the eastern part of Guangling District and the western part of Jiangdu District, the main urban area of Yangzhou City. This area is also the central area in future urban planning.
For Yangzhou, the original intention of the construction of the park was to carry out comprehensive environmental improvement.
“For a long time, this area has been a fringe between urban and rural areas, with many waste markets, gravel yards, and small shipyards. The dirty and poor environment has caused local people to complain. From 2014 to 2018, in response to the voices of the people, I In conjunction with the upgrading of the dikes on both sides of the Liaojiagou River, the city has comprehensively improved the ecological environment along the line. The above-mentioned parks have been successively built on both sides of and around the 7-kilometer river in the Liaojiagou area." Yangzhou City’s written reply Frankly, although responding to urgent demands for people’s livelihood, “but there is indeed a phenomenon of unauthorized occupation of some cultivated land in the construction of the park.”
After being notified by the Ministry of Natural Resources, Yangzhou City inspected the 13 parks one by one, and divided them into three categories according to the nature of illegal and illegal land use: one is the problem of illegal occupation of permanent basic farmland for tree planting and greening; the other is the illegal occupation of cultivated land by digging lakes and landscaping. The main problem is that part of the cultivated land is occupied by the widening of the river course, the diversion and the digging of ponds; the third is that some buildings (structures) illegally occupy the cultivated land.
A local village committee chief, Gao Geng, told China News Weekly that there is a river with a width ranging from 2 to 10 meters on the west side of Liaojiagou, which belongs to the excavation of fields.
The village where Gauguin is located is on the west side of Liaojiagou. The cultivated land in the village was requisitioned for the construction of the park.
Li Nan, an industry insider who has worked in the field of land reserve in Yangzhou for more than ten years, revealed to China News Weekly that it is not only the problem on the west side of Liaojiagou, but also that some water splashes on the east side were dug from farmland or from small ponds. Big pond.
The above-mentioned person in charge of the Yangzhou Natural Resources Bureau also explained that the illegally occupied cultivated land has not been cultivated for many years and has turned into wasteland, ditches, or has been replanted with mulberry and other plants.
When the government built the park, it was not sure about the nature of the land, and ultimately chose not to use this part of the land as cultivated land.
Illegal occupation of land prevents villagers from "insurance"
"China News Weekly" found in its investigation that because of illegal land occupation in Liaojiagou City Central Park, many villagers in surrounding villages were unable to "insure".
The household registration of farmers corresponds to a corresponding amount of cultivated land. If all cultivated land is requisitioned according to the procedures, everyone in the village can be insured-the government pays endowment insurance for the land requisitioned.
For example, Gauguin said that if a production team has 100 acres of land, 10 acres are requisitioned for road construction according to the formal procedures, and the remaining 90 acres have not completed the land acquisition procedures. As a result, only the quota corresponding to 10 acres can be insured, and the remaining 90 The villagers corresponding to acres of land cannot enter the insurance. “Without the land acquisition documents, the social security will not recognize it.”
In fact, the cost of farmers’ insurance accounts for the highest proportion of land acquisition compensation.
For example, Gauguin said that if 30 people own 10 acres of land, after the land is expropriated, the cost of insurance for one person is about 100,000 yuan, and the total cost will reach 3 million yuan.
The second is the land compensation fee, which is calculated at more than 20,000 yuan per mu, with a total of more than 200,000; the young crop fee is second, calculated at 2,000 yuan per mu, and the total is only 20,000 yuan.
Judging from the number of local villagers who have not entered the insurance, the problem of illegal land use is more serious.
According to Gauguin, in the four villages west of Liaojiagou, more than half of the farmers in some villages did not receive insurance.
Due to insufficient quotas, these villages can only be insured in descending order of age. "Some people in their 60s and 70s have not yet been able to enter the insurance."
In addition to the inability to obtain insurance, Gauguin believes that land acquisition involves compensation for arable land, young crops, and ground attachments and personnel resettlement. After digging and building rivers, the farmland is permanently destroyed, and it is difficult to define the amount of compensation and who will be compensated during subsequent acquisition.
This means that all interests have been damaged.
For some arable land that has not obtained land acquisition permits, the local government has adopted methods such as renting instead of acquisition to obtain land from farmers.
Xiaqiao Village is located on the east side of Liaojiagou. A villager told China News Weekly that from about 2012, the local government paid 1,200 yuan per mu per year to her family.
According to a villager in Zhoujia Village on the west side of Liaojiagou, the farmland of the village was also expropriated in this way.
As early as 2006, the State Council issued the "Notice on Relevant Issues Concerning Strengthening Land Regulation", which explicitly prohibited the use of lease instead of expropriation.
Substituting rent for requisition is essentially an illegal act of circumventing the land use control system, circumventing the total amount control system for conversion of agricultural land, bypassing the expropriation approval process, and renting collective land of farmers for non-agricultural construction.
In addition to occupying arable land, the Liaojiagou Urban Central Park project also involves ecological sensitivity.
Liaojiagou is one of the water sources in Yangzhou, and there is a certain conflict between the park and the protection of water sources.
According to the Regulations on the Protection of Water Sources in Jiangsu Province, it is prohibited to build, rebuild, or expand other construction projects that are not related to water supply facilities and protection of water sources.
The Liaojiagou water intake was moved here from the old water intake 1.2 kilometers away in 2014, which can increase the water intake.
However, the official website of the Yangzhou Water Resources Bureau showed that in September 2018, when the inspection team of Jiangsu Province inspected the protection of the Liaojiagou water intake in Guangling District, it showed that the Central Park Management Station was closed and personnel were moving away.
While the water intake was closed, the west side of the park was also closed for a long time.
Nowadays, on the west side of Liaojiagou City Central Park, the green trails are covered with fallen leaves and no one cleans them, and the bathroom floor is covered with dust. This part of the park has been fenced off. The warning signs above indicate: This is drinking water. Water source protection areas are prohibited from entering.
In the future, how will Liaojiagou Central Park be rectified?
According to the Measures of the Ministry of Natural Resources for Listed Supervision and Public Notification of Violations of Laws and Regulations, the provincial natural resources authority should form an investigation and handling opinion within 45 days from the date of listing for supervision.
Yangzhou’s reply to China News Weekly stated that it will carry out “classification and rectification” according to the nature of the problem: for tree planting and greening and lake landscaping, the problem of illegal occupation of cultivated land shall be supplemented in accordance with the principle of “occupying one for one”. Quality arable land; resolutely demolish and reclaim the illegally occupied buildings (structures) that do not meet the planning and cannot be completed and repaired; reorganize and reorganize parks that are highly recognized by the public and have a certain social influence , After investigation and punishment according to law, complete the land use procedures; adopt comprehensive methods such as partial demolition, investigation and improvement, and supplementation of cultivated land for parks with important ecological functions and social service functions.
Li Nan believes that rectification is generally to demolish all the buildings and hardened roads and restore them to the original state. "But investment in parks is not a small number. It will be restored to cultivated land within three years. The cost will be high when it comes and goes."
For the surrounding villagers, they have different ideas.
Gauguin believes, "At this time, the restoration of the park into farmland is of little significance to farmers. I think that we must protect the interests of the people, compensation must be in place, and all that can be protected must be protected."
Anxious to "build gardens" leveraging land appreciation
According to the above-mentioned person in charge of the Yangzhou Natural Resources Bureau, the other 12 parks involved in the supervision of the listing are mainly located in the "Three Rivers and Six Banks" area of Yangzhou.
"Three rivers and six banks" refers to the three rivers of Mangdao River, Jinwan River, and Xintongyang Canal and the areas on both sides. They are located on the east side of Liaojiagou. The three rivers and Liaojiagou eventually merge and merge into the Yangtze River.
Guangling District is responsible for the construction of Liaojiagou City Central Park, while Sanhe Liuan Park is built by Jiangdu District.
According to the official website of the Jiangdu District Government of Yangzhou City, the construction of the first phase of Sanhe Liuan Park began in 2018, with a total landscape green area of about 345 mu and a river bank line of 1.6 kilometers. The estimated total investment is 350 million yuan; the second phase covers a total area of about 80,000 Square meters, the coastline is about 1 km long and is currently under construction.
Two large parks were built after the expansion of the main urban area of Yangzhou.
In recent years, the urban development of Yangzhou has accelerated.
In 2011, Jiangdu City was removed from the county and became a part of the downtown area of Yangzhou. The area of the urban area has also expanded to 231 square kilometers, more than doubled.
The junction of Jiangdu District and Guangling District is 146 square kilometers. With Liaojiagou as the center, Yangzhou will build Guangling New City on the west side and the ecological technology new city on the east side.
For this reason, Yangzhou also proposed the concept of Jiangguang integration zone.
Xie Zhengyi, the former secretary of the Yangzhou Municipal Party Committee, compared the new district to an enlarged courtyard in the book "Park City" published last year. The park is the courtyard of this courtyard.
First plan the construction of an ecological sports and leisure park in the central area, then arrange kindergartens, schools, etc. around it, and then arrange residential houses.
Under this concept, not only will the regional plots become better ecologically, but the plots will also increase in value later.
"Our Liaojiagou City Central Park is built according to this concept." Xie Zhengyi said in an interview with The Paper.
The book "Park City" introduced the plan to "use 20 years to develop 20 square kilometers and gather 200,000 people."
However, although the urban area of Yangzhou has increased, the lack of construction land has become a stumbling block hindering the drawing of the blueprint of Yangzhou.
In order to increase the area of construction land, Yangzhou City started from adjusting the land plan.
In May 2017, according to the “Adjustment Plan for Land Utilization of 11 Towns and Sub-districts including Shatou, Guangling District, Yangzhou City (2006-2020)”, the area of cultivated land in Guangling District was reduced from 10641.9 hectares to 8273.3 hectares. During the Three Five-Year Plan period, the Guangling New City will be basically completed, the ecological technology new city and the "three rivers and six banks" regional infrastructure construction will be completed, and the Yangzhou high-speed rail comprehensive hub will be completed.
At present, with the Liaojiagou Urban Central Park as the core, the projects of the new ecological technology city are constantly being implemented, the original villages are relocated and the cultivated land is continuously reduced, and even the experimental fields of the local Academy of Agricultural Sciences have been forced to move away.
A staff member of the Yangzhou Academy of Agricultural Sciences told China News Weekly that the Academy of Agricultural Sciences moved here in 2003 to open up wasteland. After years of farming, these lands became high-quality farmland.
The Yangzhou Academy of Agricultural Sciences was established in April 1949. The "Yangmai No. 5" and "Yangmai 158" developed by Yangzhou Academy of Agricultural Sciences won the first prize of the National Science and Technology Progress Award. The Academy of Agricultural Sciences is also known as the strongest regional institute in China.
A few years ago, the Eco-Tech New City Management Committee leased the first and second floors of the Yangzhou Academy of Agricultural Sciences building.
The aforementioned staff member said that at the time she was also worried that if it was occupied for a long time, it would occupy the office and laboratory space of the Agricultural Science Institute. What she did not expect was that "the result is that we will move out as a whole."
After the construction of the high-speed railway station in the new city began, the experimental land area of the Yangzhou Academy of Agricultural Sciences continued to shrink, and the scale of the experiment also decreased accordingly.
According to the above-mentioned staff, the experimental plots have been requisitioned one by one since the year before.
Last year, the greenhouse was also demolished.
The new base of the Yangzhou Academy of Agricultural Sciences in the districts and counties has begun construction, and the new base has a larger area, but she believes: “The seeds can still be taken away. The problem is that the soil on both sides is different and the soil needs to be cultivated again.”
Li Nan introduced that the construction of suburban parks often involves cultivated land.
The normal procedure is to first adjust the spatial planning to achieve a balance of arable land occupation and compensation, and then publicly requisition and provide land, and then construction can begin after these procedures are completed.
In his opinion, the illegal land occupation part of Liaojiagou City Central Park has obviously not been approved, and the local government may not even report the plan to the project.
One of the important intentions of eager to build a park is to obtain huge profits after land appreciation.
Li Nan introduced that the income obtained from the land purchased and stored in Yangzhou City will not be shared with the districts and counties. This also causes the districts and counties to choose to purchase and store the land by themselves, thereby obtaining most of the income. "Guangling New City, Eco-technological New City, Land It is a closed operation. The local government is responsible for the requisition, and according to its plan, it decides how to use the land. Guangling District is responsible for the conflicts encountered in land requisition and infrastructure construction in this area. Of course, the future benefits of these land will be relatively rich."
The book "Park City" introduced: "The price of surrounding land in Liaojiagou City Central Park rose from 5.3 million yuan per mu in 2014 to 6.8267 million yuan per mu in 2017.” According to the 2017 Yangzhou City Land and Resources Bulletin, The land supply area of the new ecological technology city was 1,629.76 mu, a year-on-year increase of nearly 7 times.
Two methods of allocation and transfer are adopted. The transfer area is 568 mu. Based on the above price, the transfer amount reaches 3.87 billion yuan.
However, the early construction of the park is a huge investment in itself.
According to the book "Park City", since 2014, more than 350 parks have been built in Yangzhou.
Among them, there are more than 200 large and small parks in the main urban area.
The book "Park City" mentioned: "We have made a statistics: Since the construction of the urban park system in the main urban area of Yangzhou in 2014, the cumulative investment has been nearly 10 billion yuan."
In Yangzhou's way of investing in the construction of parks and then obtaining land in return for the construction of a new city, Li Nan believes that the most common problem is that there is no benefit from spending money.
First of all, the maintenance cost of the park is a huge expense.
According to the announcement of Yangzhou City’s urban investment platform-Yangzhou Xinsheng Investment Development Co., Ltd., its subsidiary, Yangzhou Eco-Tech New City Asset Management Co., Ltd., had total assets of 150 million yuan, total liabilities of 78 million yuan, and revenue as of the end of 2019. 42 million yuan and a net loss of 14 million yuan.
Regarding the reason for the loss, the announcement stated that it was mainly due to the centralized maintenance of Liaojiagou Wetland and Wanfang Academy, which resulted in large costs.
Secondly, investing heavily in the park in the early stage will drive the appreciation of land, and the subsequent development model is also prone to a heavy debt burden.
Yangzhou Yishengde Industrial Development Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as Yishengde) is also an urban investment platform in Yangzhou City, and is an important infrastructure construction and real estate development entity in the new ecological technology city.
According to its announcement, as of the end of 2019, the company's total assets were 20.132 billion yuan, total liabilities were 12.655 billion yuan, operating income was 1.077 billion yuan, and net profit was 123 million yuan.
Among them, the company's interest-bearing liabilities balance was 6.628 billion yuan.
The annual report also shows that Yishengde has 1.9 billion yuan in debt service this year and needs to repay the debt by issuing notes and bonds.
Shanghai New Century Assets Appraisal and Investment Services Co., Ltd. stated in its appraisal report that “Esstech’s main business profitability is relatively limited, its dependence on government subsidies is relatively high, and project construction and operation rely on external financing, etc.”.
Park city mode cannot be rashly entered
"When the environment is good, the industry will naturally come over. This is the development logic of the park city." Liu Yuping, deputy dean of the School of Construction and Engineering of Yangzhou University and former chief planner of the Yangzhou City Planning Bureau, told China News Weekly.
However, there are also certain challenges to improve the environment through park construction and attract industries to land.
"Industrial development is not only an environmental issue, but also the cost of enterprises, the service level of local governments, and industrial support."
As a participant in the park city, Liu Yuping has been thinking about it over the past few years: “The key question is how to transform into economic benefits: how can cultural resources be transformed into tourism resources? How can environmental resources drive the industry? If these are not done well, there will be There may be a problem."
Yangzhou is an active promoter and practitioner of the park city model in recent years, and it has also driven this trend.
In an interview with China News Weekly, Lu Shikun, member of the Party Committee of the Yangzhou Municipal Housing and Urban-rural Construction Bureau and deputy director of the Landscape Administration Bureau, summarized two major characteristics of the construction of Yangzhou Park in terms of land resource utilization: First, he was willing to use prime locations as parks. ; The second is to focus on the restoration and development of some deserted beaches, garbage dumps and urban depressions, and build them into parks.
In order to be able to build more parks, Yangzhou has listed the construction targets of the park system in the “No. 1 Document” of the municipal party committee and municipal government’s people’s livelihood for three consecutive years, and established a municipal and district-level assessment system, linking the assessment results with management funds.
In terms of capital security, governments at all levels and functional zone management committees include park construction and management funds into their fiscal budgets. The government uses 5% of the land transfer fee for tree planting and urban greening every year.
In terms of legislation, Yangzhou adopted the "Yangzhou Park Regulations", which clearly stipulates that the construction of Yangzhou's park system will not change due to changes in leaders, and that the number and area of parks must not be reduced.
During the advancement of Yangzhou's "Park City", the ideas of the city's governing officials have been implemented to the end, and even the tree planting methods have been refined, such as the "Tree Array Landscape" recommended by Europe.
From the perspective of land prices, Yangzhou's parks have played a significant role in pulling up.
Not only was the land price around Liaojiagou Central Park rising significantly, but the land price around Shiguta Park in the non-urban central area rose from 3.4733 million yuan/mu in 2013 to 6.44 million yuan/mu in 2017.
This time, the Ministry of Natural Resources listed under the supervision of the Ministry of Natural Resources because of illegal land occupation, which also sounded the alarm for the model of gardening in Yangzhou.
Li Nan believes: "The first step is to complete the procedures for building a park, and secondly, we must consider whether this place should be built with such a large project, and it should not be built too much, and it is not just trying to build it."
However, Liu Yuping believes that all the parks in Yangzhou are constructed according to the plan and are not random. “Of course there are some problems. As a project vigorously promoted by the Yangzhou City Government, various districts and counties have exceeded the limit in order to complete the target. Happening".
Take Yangzhou Jiangdu District as an example. As of the end of 2017, 22 sports and leisure parks have been built, 6 were constructed in 2018, and 9 will be built or continued this year. Within three years, the area of the park has almost doubled in number and area. increase.
Zhan Dongmei, an assistant researcher at the China Tourism Research Institute, previously told China News Weekly that the park construction should not save face and engage in performance projects. After a large amount of financial investment is invested, it will be difficult to maintain in the later period, causing financial burdens.
"I think the problem is often not the problem of the park, but the lack of a reasonable plan during the initial construction."
Liu Yuping believes that before the construction of the park city, we must do a good job of top-level design and have a strategic thinking.
In the top-level design, Cheng Yuning, a professor at the School of Architecture of Southeast University, felt that the first thing to do was to solve the gender issues, that is, ecological sensitivity and land use adaptability.
The second is to focus on handling the two-state problem, that is, the coupling between the urban ecology and the urban form.
Yangzhou told China News Weekly that it would take this case to improve the long-term mechanism, “learn lessons deeply, analyze the problems that have occurred, study the root causes, and find weak links from the system.” In addition, Yangzhou The municipal party committee and the municipal government have initiated the accountability procedure, "on the basis of finding out the facts, the relevant units and personnel shall be held accountable in accordance with law and discipline, and the role of warning and education in the investigation and handling of typical cases shall be effectively brought into play."
(At the request of the interviewee, Gauguin and Li Nan are aliases)
China News Weekly, Issue 38, 2020
Statement: The publication of "China News Weekly" manuscript is authorized in writing