Both Zhang and Wang got two certificates: property ownership certificates and land use right certificates.

For Zhang, it is the collective rural construction land use right valid for 40 years. With the two certificates, Zhang will be able to sell his property on the market. But Wang cannot sell his because his certificate is rural housing land use right, which cannot be sold on the market.

"I feel that I've benefited a lot. I got a two-story villa without paying anything," Wang says. "I don't want to sell my house and move to the city, the air here on the mountain is so much better."

Han Jun, director of the State Council Development Research Center's Rural Economy Department, says such practices are unsuitable for other rural areas.

Han, who has just returned from doing research on countryside policies in Japan, says the restriction on rural land use is even tighter in Japan. "Japanese farmers are not allowed to sell their rural homes to city people and there is no way urban people can build houses on rural housing land."

Han thinks such practices might trigger disputes in the future, but "since we are dealing with the quake zones, the situation is different."

Luo Zhaopeng says land use rights should be freely transferred as long as the use of the land is not changed. "We shouldn't worry too much that once the farmers sell their rural housing land or farmland, they will have no place to live or nothing to eat," he says.

"Instead we should give them enough freedom and let them decide what to do with their land. The key point is to improve the social security system for the farmers."

(Shanghai Daily May 25, 2009)