CPC moves to solve land disputes amid rising protest (4)

"The compensation looks quite a lot of money, but we've lost our land and can't enjoy the same treatment in employment, medicare and education as urban residents do," Yang said.

"Our lives have no guarantee, and even my kid has to pay extra fees to go to school in the city. All these are quite annoying," she said.

As China's urbanization has driven over half of 1.3 billion Chinese into cities and towns, many farmers like Yang are having their land seized by local governments without property compensation, thus spawning seeds of unrest in the country.

"The unfair treatment farmers face in land seizures are now the primary source of complaints and social unrest in the country," said Wang Kaiyu, a sociologist who has conducted field investigations in rural China for a long time.

"In reforming the land expropriation system, the government should appropriately raise the one-off compensations to farmers, but establishing a mechanism to guarantee their long-term lives is even more important," Wang said.

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