Rural land reforms to empower farmers

BEIJING - Chinese farmers are expected to have more say in determining the destiny of their contracted land as the government vows to intensify reforms to back their rights.

The government aims to complete rural land use-rights registration in five years and step up property rights protection for farmers' land use-rights, according to China's first policy document for 2013 released on Thursday.

It will also speed up work on reforms in the rural land expropriation system, implementing stricter acquisition procedures, rationalizing compensation and increasing farmers' shares in the output of expropriated land, the document said.