Song Heyi, a farmer from Henan Province, was crushed to death by an excavator as he tried to stop it from driving through his farmland on March 27. The tragedy was caused by a land compensation dispute. Henan Hongyi Agricultural Technology Company dispatched an excavator to his land, after Song had refused to accept the land compensation package offered by the company.

"The company warned they had money, and didn't see killing a person as a big deal," one villager told CCTV.

The public uproar reached a new high after a string of similarly violent cases took place in rural areas of Henan, Sichuan and Hubei within days.

Zhang Ruqiong, a 44-year-old farmer in Xibiantang village, under Yichang of Hubei Province, was crushed to death by a cement truck on March 30 after she went to a construction site to protest. She was embroiled in a dispute over compensation with a highway construction company.

In Sichuan, farmer Song Wuhua was killed by a bulldozer while checking up on his village's only water source located on a dumping site for an iron mine company on April 3. Song had had a long dispute with the company as it had discharged slag heaps onto farmland and affected the water supply.

The increasing number of incidents has exemplified the increasingly dense web of conflicts between local governments and villagers over land acquisition. This has prompted a public outcry for enacting legitimate compensation system in cases of collective land acquisition to ensure farmers' rights.

Pay your debts

In Xibiantang village, farmers are getting used to protesting at a highway construction site. Villagers have complained that the building of the highway has brought a lot of trouble to their lives, including damage caused to their houses while being offered pitiful levels of compensation. 

Despite multiple protests, the local government has taken no specific measures to address their grievances.

Villagers feel that this neglect of farmers' rights and delayed compensation led to the death of Zhang Ruqiong.

In 2009, hundreds of hectares of land were acquired by the government for a highway linking Yichang to Badong in Hubei.

"We're not satisfied. I went to the local government multiple times to talk about this issue but they would make some empty promises and ask us to leave," villager Xiang Xianmin from Xibiantang told the Global Times.

Like other villagers, Xiang's house was demolished. She received a compensation of 80,000 yuan ($12,930) for the house but she said she paid more than 150,000 yuan to build a new home nearby.

Owing to the fast development of urbanization and industrialization, violent incidents linked to land acquisition disputes are on the rise.

Statistics from the State Bureau of Letters and Calls showed a total of 60 percent of petitions and protests are related with land disputes. Among these, petitioning over land compensation disputes account for 84.7 percent.

According to the Constitution, the government has the power to reclaim rural collective lands in the name of public interest.

It is very difficult to define the broad concept of "public interest" which leaves enough room for local officials to abuse their power and organize the misappropriation of farmland for personal gain.

"In order to get huge profits, some local governments sell farmland to real estate developers or other companies for tens of times the price they paid to farmers and without following proper procedures," Du Zhixiong, an expert on rural development from Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, told the Global Times.

According to the land management law, State Council approval is required to transfer ownership of land but this procedure is very complex and can usually gets dragged out.

In some cases, the local governments skipped the procedure altogether and went ahead with repossessing the land without authorization.

Farmland transfers must also be subject to a two-thirds approval of village representatives, according to the land law.  

However, in Xibiantang, villagers complained they were never gathered or consulted. Their voices were never heard and they were never offered a negotiation on the compensation package. 

In the Henan case, criticism has been rampant over the fact that instead of arresting and charging the perpetrators and their employers, the Henan authorities have colluded with the companies to get the relatives of the deceased to sign compensation agreements soon after the incidents.

"Economic compensation cannot replace the criminal responsibility. The criminal responsibilities of the perpetrators must be brought to light," said Tian Wenchang, director of Committee of Criminal Justice at All China Lawyers' Association.

In the village of Xiangshi in Ganyu county, Jiangsu Province, more than 160 hectares of farmland has been reclaimed by the local government since December 2011. However, the compensation has been held back for two years and is being paid out to victims in increments.

The head of the county said he held back the compensation on behalf of the villagers. "If I gave the compensation to the farmers in one lump sum, they would eat away all their money within a year," Gu Shaobo, the county head said.

Keeping the little guy down

"Under the current situation, compensation in different regions varies greatly, due to the scarcity of available land and levels of economic development, making it difficult to set an exact level of compensation," Chen Xiwen, deputy director of the Leading Work Group of Financial and Economic Works of the CPC Central Committee, told the National Business Daily.

Compensation standards differ according to the diversified use of the land. Compensation for land acquired for public use, such as roads, schools and hospitals, is much lower than that intended for commercial use.

The current regulation rules that compensation cannot be higher than 30 times the average production value of the land over the past three years.

In the distribution of land income, farmers' interests thus cannot be protected and they only get the slightest sliver of the profits made from land acquisition, said Fang Ning, deputy director of the Institute of Politics at Chinese Academy of Social Sciences.

According to a survey carried by the Renmin University of China, governments could acquire land from the farmers at an average price of 18,739 yuan per mu (0.066 hectares), while they sell it at 778,000 yuan per mu, a mark-up of over 40 times that stiffs the farmers. 

Normally, the local government and the village committee take in 20 to 30 percent respectively, the company gets 40 to 50 percent, while the farmers' cut only makes up for 5 to 10 percent of the income, Fang said.

The survey also showed that around 64.7 percent of the farmers having lost their land since 1999 received a one-off compensation, while 12.7 percent of them haven't received anything.

Legal experts called on the central government to accelerate the legislative process to pass regulation on the compensation of collective land acquisition.

In January 2010, the State Council issued a draft regulation on the compensation and expropriation of buildings on State-owned land.

It was designed to ensure land rights and proper compensation for people in urban areas. However, the draft only applied to State-owned land, which has left a large number of helpless farmers with nowhere to seek justice.

Previous media reports said lawmakers had been mulling over this regulation for some time. However, due to its complexity and sensitivity, the regulation has not been issued yet.

But while authorities drag their feet, more and more farmers are losing their land due to the expansion of urbanization. 

More than 40 million farmers have lost their land, mostly because of land acquisition, according to a 2011 report on China's Urban Development issued by the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences.

Land is a guarantee for farmers' livelihoods. Those who have lost their land often cannot find jobs, worsening social instability and leading to more mass incidents. As such, governments at all levels have become preoccupied with how to safeguard farmers' land rights.

"The local governments should retreat from land transfers, letting companies and farmers negotiate directly and settle compensation among themselves. The local governments should respect farmers' rights and not compete with farmers in profits for selling land," Du said.

He added that the most needed step is for land acquisition to be guided by a transparent and fair process.

"The government should release to the public detailed information about land acquisition, including the area involved, intended use and compensation levels. That way, land acquisition work would not be able to start until the villagers approved of the package." 

On April 6, the Yuanduhe county government, which oversees Xibiantang village, held an emergency conference with the construction company, urging it to solve problems with the village, including compensation for damage to houses and land acquisition, within 15 days.

As of press time, none of the officials in Hubei have been punished and the company resumed construction work on April 10.

"We want a just ruling on the death of my wife," Li Zongxing, husband of Zhang Ruqiong, told the Global Times.