Approximately one million mu (66,667 ha) of land was damaged by coal mining and road building every year, said director Pan Ming of the Farmland Protection Department of the Ministry of Land Resources.

    Coal mining alone damaged about 700,000 mu (46,667 ha) of land a year, about two-thirds of which was arable.

    Last year, China produced almost two billion tons of unprocessed coal, but lost almost one million mu (66,667 ha).

    Delayed reclamation damaged the environment, aggravated the arable land shortage, degraded the living conditions of local people and seriously jeopardized public securities, said a ministry report on waste land.

    China's arable land shrank to 1.4 mu (0.09 ha) per person last year, just 40 percent of the international average.

    "Waste land is a huge potential asset for China," Pan said, urging local governments to provide more investment in land reclamation.

    According to the ministry, about 60 percent of the existing waste land can be reclaimed for cultivation, with a potential output of 27 billion kilograms of grain a year.

    Another 30 percent could be reclaimed for forestry and other agricultural purposes, with potential earnings of about 40.5 billion yuan.

    The remaining 10 percent, or 20 million mu (1,333,333 ha), could sustain the country's construction needs in four to five years. If the transfer of land use rights was charged at 100,000 yuan per mu (0.07 ha), local governments would take in an extra revenue of 900 billion yuan.

    Land reclaimed accounted for just 12 percent of waste land. Before the Land Reclamation Regulation was implemented in 1988, the proportion was 2 percent, official statistics revealed.

    Last year, China reclaimed 4.6 million mu (306,667 ha) of wasteland and lost 2.08 million mu (138,667 ha) of farmland to construction projects. Enditem