The land policy of the city of Hong Kong is based on a land lease instrument: the government purchases rural properties in the zones of future urban expansion, in order to lease them to entrepreneurs, and thus charges for their use and invests it in the city’s infrastructure.
In the process of acquisition of these lands, the government established three main modes of compensation and rehabilitaion of the rural families that would be displaced: financial compensation for the lands, employment programmes in the industries, and a social-economic rehabilitation/integration programme.
The social-economic rehabilitation programme is implemented by distribution of subsidies that take into consideration the gender and age of the affected population. For example, elderly people receive funds from social security and may receive monthly payments from social security for a period of up to 15 years (the age for retirement is 60 years for men and 50 for women). Men older than 45 years and women older than 35 years receive social security funds and receive the monthly payments from social security only after they retire.
Another form of subsidy is an annual payment equivalent to the average agricultural income of the last three years of production. In addition to subsidies, this programme foresees the possibility of exchange of agricultural lands for urban lands for the development of activities of secondary and tertiary sectors. In some cases, agriculture workers also have the opportunity to be employed in the industries that will be installed on their lands.
This information was extracted from the paper “Land Acquisition in China: Reform and Assessment”, of Chengri Ding, Lincoln Institute of Land Policy, 2005.
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