Local farmland loss and preservation in China-A perspective of quota territorialization

This paper presents a critical review of post-Mao local farmland loss and preservation, particularly since the mid 2000s. Nationwide, annual loss of farmland has declined significantly from an average annual decline of 14 million mu (about 930 thousand hectares) between 1999 and 2005, to 1 million mu (about 67 thousand hectares) since 2006. The slow-down of farmland loss can ostensibly be attributed to the central land policy of “1.8 billion mu farmland preservation” stipulated in 2005, a key environmental policy to cope with China's land transformation crisis since the 1990s. However, I argue that three key quota territorialization tactics to skillfully promote economic development behind central government's sustainable land policy can be found: (1) intra-territorialization (consolidation of fragmental rural land in order to shift newly obtained quota to urban districts in the same city); (2) inter-territorialization (exchange of land conversion quotas between two different cities); and (3) extra-territorialization (development of marginal lands that are used not to be counted as useable lands). Operations of these three quota territorialization tactics are facilitated by central-local dynamical interactions in manipulating ecological modernization discourses and related technologies.