The General Offices of the Communist Party of China Central Committee and the State Council have issued guidelines on improving the natural resource asset management system, focusing on property rights reform, efficient allocation, and overall protection of natural resources.
The guidelines set a two-step target: by 2030, the management system will be more robust with clearer responsibilities, better resource accounting, stronger protection, more efficient allocation, and improved evaluation and oversight; by 2035, a comprehensive and well-functioning management system will be fully established.
To clarify the resource base, the guidelines call for improving unified survey, monitoring, and evaluation systems covering land, minerals, forests, grasslands, wetlands, water, and oceans, and for regular asset inventories to ascertain physical quantities and explore value accounting.
On property rights, the guidelines aim to improve the system of usufructuary rights, separate ownership from use rights, explore establishing construction land use rights for deep underground space and state-owned agricultural land use rights, and advance unified registration of natural resources and real estate.
For overall protection, the guidelines emphasize preserving and increasing asset value, strictly protecting arable land and permanent basic farmland, promoting mixed land development and composite spatial use, and improving mechanisms for realizing the value of ecological products. Reserve management will be optimized by including all state-owned construction land with undetermined users into reserves and exploring comprehensive storage.
To promote efficient allocation, the guidelines deepen the reform of paid use systems, improve allocation rules such as allocation, leasing, and equity contribution, fully implement competitive transfer of mining rights, and gradually increase the market-based allocation ratio of sea use rights. A new model of bundled allocation will be established, allowing multiple resources in a specific territory to be allocated together, with use conditions, development requirements, starting prices, and ecological protection and restoration requirements included in a unified public plan.
On oversight and assessment, a unified revenue management system for state-owned natural resource assets will be established, with all related revenues included in government budgets. Whole-process supervision will be strengthened, and a unified reporting system will require public disclosure of state-owned natural resource asset conditions.
The guidelines stress centralized leadership by the CPC Central Committee, urging close coordination among regions and departments, enhanced risk monitoring, and encouragement of differentiated local reforms. The Ministry of Natural Resources will lead efforts to resolve new issues in implementation, with major matters reported to the Central Committee and the State Council.