China introduces tough regulation on land reclamation from sea

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China has introduced its toughest regulation on land reclamation along the country's coastline, vowing to demolish illegally reclaimed land and stop approving general reclamation projects.

The State Oceanic Administration (SOA) said Wednesday that it would demolish or shut down all illegally reclaimed land and illegally established waste discharge outlets that damage the marine environment.

Restricted by China's property regulation policies to cool down the overheated market, profit-driving local governments and property developers have been keen on reclaiming land from the sea.

A hotel project which reclaimed land from sea without approval was pulled down in Sanya, southern China’s Hainan Province on January 17, 2018. /VCG Photo

From 2006 to 2010, the total area of land reclaimed from the sea reached 5,000 square kilometers, which equals to reclaiming a land in the same size of Hong Kong from the sea each year, official data showed.

To stop the spree, SOA started investigation into land reclamation from sea in 11 coast cities and provinces since 2017.

So far the regulator has made 262 punishments and fined about 1.25 billion yuan (194 million US dollars) for such illegal land reclamation projects.

Lin Shanqing, deputy director of the SOA, said at a press conference that China will not approve reclamation projects that do not concern the national economy and people's livelihood.

He added that projects which have been approved, but do not comply with the current policy will also be stopped.

Moreover, local governments will not receive annual land reclamation quota from now on.

"Using reclaimed land for commercial real estate development is prohibited and all reclamation activities in the Bohai Sea area will be banned," Lin said. "Reclaimed land that has remained deserted for a long time will be confiscated."

Bohai Sea, also known as Bohai Gulf, is the innermost gulf of the Yellow Sea and Korea Bay on the coast of northeastern and northern China.

The gulf with an are of only 77,000 square kilometers has been under pressure in recent years, with an area of 551 square kilometers being reclaimed between 1996 and 2007, leading a sharp drop of the gulf’s purification ability.

Since the law on administration of maritime space use was put into place in 2002, China legally approved a total of 158,000 hectares of land reclamation by the end of 2017, accounting for about 12 percent of the newly added construction land area in coastal areas over the same period.

Gross ocean production accounts for 9.5 percent of China's GDP, statistics show.

(With input from Xinhua)