TNAG-1499-FCO40-2057-Guangdong-nuclear-power-station-project-at-Daya-Bay-safety-c-1986 — Page 153

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ра

Rela

aurk1661

226D (

British Embassy

PEKING

HICK 160/

RECEIVED S.,

R Fletcher-Cooke Esq

18 JUL 1986

FED

FCO

IN

7 July 1986

H&C.D (for para 7)

ота, оті.

Go, Advisers

D

NATIONAL PEOPLE'S CONGRESS STANDING COMMITTEE

1.

ре

रिक

The 16th meeting of the National People's Congress Standing Committee was held in Peking from 16 to 25 June. The meeting:

(a) Passed the Land Management Law of the People's

Republic of China, to come into force on

1 January 1987;

(b) Approved the final accounts for 1985;

(c) Appointed Wang Meng as Minister of Culture

and made a number of other appointments.

2. The Land Management Law was introduced by Song Rufen a Deputy Chairman of the NPG Legislative Committee. It deals with broad questions of the ownership and rights to use of land in China. Very roughly land in the urban areas is owned by the State (the whole people) and in rural areas it is collectively owned. Much of the commentary has focussed on land use in the rural areas, especially indiscriminate abuses (use of arable land for building or small scale industry, neglect of fertile land etc) which have led to an annual loss of about 800,000 hectares of fertile land since 1949. In 1984 the figure jumped to 1.2 million hectares. According to China Daily

(4 July) almost half China's cultivated land had disappeared since the late 1940s. The new law also contains a number of provisions which attempt to curb the ecological problems associated with land use, or misuse (eg soil erosion, open cast mining etc).

3.

The Minister of Finance, Wang Bingqian, presented a report to the meeting on the final state accounts for 1985. The figures he gave were slightly different from the preliminary ones he had given to the full session of the NPC in April, with both income and expenditure revised upwards slightly, but

/expenditure

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