A Zhejiang official was punished for his role in approving a massive project to build a replica of Yuangmingyuan, or the Old Summer Palace, the Shanghai Bureau of State Land Supervision said yesterday.

Ren Liping, director of the Dongyang reform and development bureau in Zhejiang, was censured by the authorities for violating related State regulations on land use, it said.

The move was part of China's land resources authority's bid to ensure enough arable land supply, at a time land supply and demand did not match, said Zhang Xianyu, director of the general office at the Shanghai Bureau of State Land Supervision.

During an investigation by the Shanghai Bureau of State Land Supervision last March, it was found that among the 6,165 mu (411 hectares) of land planned for the project, almost half, 3,091 mu, didn't comply with the land use planning of the Hengdian township, where the park will be located.

The local Dongyang development and reform bureau had falsely divided the whole project into seven sub-projects and gave it a go-ahead without approval from the higher authorities.

The area chosen for the project was passed off as "urban construction land", ignoring the fact that about 1,057 mu of it was originally planned for agricultural use. In April last year the Shanghai bureau asked the Zhejiang government to order the Dongyang government to act on the error.

The Ministry of Land Resources on May 25 last year imposed a freeze on the land use quota of Dongyang for 2008.

"We are working on a comprehensive procedure to implement the central government's instructions to keep the total amount of arable land above the red line of 1.8 billion mu (120 million hectares) nationwide," Zhang told China Daily yesterday, adding that the local Dongyang government had been very cooperative and resolute in correcting the errors.

He admitted that in the affluent East China provinces like Zhejiang, shrinking arable lands is a major problem, and that his bureau will take resolute measures to liquidize remnant land inventory and ensure enough arable lands.

According to the country's land laws, requisitioning arable lands for the construction of theme parks, such as the Hengdian park, is forbidden.

The private Hengdian Group announced in February last year that it will invest 20 billion yuan to rebuild all 126 of Yuanmingyuan's key areas on the 411-ha site in Hengdian.

The plan has since received a lot of opposition from both Yuanmingyuan and the academic circles, citing a waste of money and infringement of intellectual property rights of the real park.

(China Daily April 10, 2009)