Shanghai has launched a unified land trading market with a mission to help stem corruption in related transactions across the city.

The Shanghai Municipal Land Trading Market was inaugurated on Saturday with 3,000 square meters of space in the Lujiazui area of Pudong New District.

Its main concerns are transfers and leases of land use rights for commercial developments or industrial purpose, division and transfer of the use rights of large patches of land for development, housing construction and the transfer of land accompanying it.

The market is connected to land trading departments in the city's 19 urban districts and suburban counties. In these departments potential buyers can obtain from their own localities full and objective information about all land resources that are put up for trading at the market, according to Ma Ren, Shanghai Municipal Real Estate Trading Center director.

"Shanghai Municipal Land Trading Market will serve as a platform through which all information shall be released in a unified way. Trading can be done according to the same rules standards, so supervision will become easier."

While addressing a special function to mark the launch, Wang Shiyuan, Land and Resources vice minister, said the new market would play a role in increasing more opportunities for trading but bringing down the cost in doing so.

"With this platform, market forces will be allowed to play a fundamental role in the mobilization of land resources. There will be less human interference too, which will in turn improve transparency and credibility of land administrative departments.

"This platform will help the government know and analyse information about the land market in time, and improve relevant control measures," Wang said.

Land transfer has turned out to be extremely lucrative in Shanghai. In the past, such trading was not conducted openly and often done in a murky and substandard manner, turning it into a hotbed of corruption. This has led to the downfall of numerous officials, including Yin Guoyuan, former Shanghai Housing, Land and Resources Bureau deputy director, and Zhu Wenjin, chief of the bureau's land-utilisation management section.

Prosecutors have filed a lawsuit against Yin for allegedly accepting 36.7 million yuan (5.16 million U.S. dollars) and failing to account for the sources of 8.1 million yuan and 40,000 U.S. dollars found in his possession.

Yin allegedly accepted bribes himself or with his wife, surnamed Chen, from real estate development companies in return for favorable treatment in land use applications from 2000 to 2006, the Shanghai People's Procuratorate No. 1 Branch said.

Zhu is under investigation for "abusing his position by allowing others to profit in exchange for cash and expensive gifts" since April. No new progress has been reported about that investigation.

(Xinhua News Agency March 3, 2008)