On evolution of land policy and industrial land use in China

Industrial land, acting as the basic production element, plays a crucial role in the industrialization process. Whereas, as agricultural, residential and commercial land management becomes much emphasized, less attention is paid to industrial land. Based on literature review and data mining, the paper briefly analyzes the evolution of land policy in China and presents a description of industrial land use during the process, dividing the whole period into four stages. In each stage, there are some specific conditions of industrial land use, as the industrial land allocation changed from freely administrative allocation to the bid invitation, auction and listing with reserve price in policy. The features of large area, low intensity and free/low price of industrial land have remained through all those years, waiting to be further addressed. Country-wide data and practices show that several problems stays around the country. In a context that allocations of industrial land are mainly driven by policy, the regulatory function of market mechanism is quite limited. A few suggestions are proposed to improve the situation at the end of this paper.