The unlawful land grabs were discovered between September 15 last year and January 15, and led to 2,864 people being punished, Xinhua news agency quoted Zhang Pu of the Ministry of Land and Resources as saying.

Land illegally seized amounted to 224,000 hectares (553,000 acres) in total, according to Xinhua, nearly 60 percent of which was used before getting government approval.

The seizures reflect a widespread problem that sees local government authorities collude with businessmen to force people off their property to make way for lucrative developments.

It is a phenomenon which extends from the cities to rural areas, with residents kicked out of their homes or off their land for little or no compensation.

As part of the crackdown authorities retook or demolished unlawful buildings and seized or fined people a total of four billion yuan (570 million dollars), Xinhua said.

Human rights activists say corruption is so endemic that the government can do little to solve the problem, even if it genuinely wants to stop the land grabs, which have been a big part of the nation's modernisation drive.

According to figures from the Ministry of Public Security, there were 87,000 protests across the country in 2005, up 50 percent from two years earlier, many of them over land grabs.

The amount of land illegally grabbed last year was up 68 percent from 2006, according to the news agency.

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