The earthquake that devastated Sichuan province in 2008, killing more than 80,000 and displacing millions, ripped through the tourist town of Dujiangyan in three terrifying minutes.

As people rebuilt their lives and homes in the aftermath of the quake, officials eased restrictions on land sales, which are closely managed and hugely controversial in China. Five years later, in the wake of this week’s senior Communist party meeting promising economic reform, a watered-down version of the Dujiangyan experiment on selling land zoned for building – as opposed to farmland – is now likely to be rolled out across the country.

This week’s Third Plenum concluded with calls to establish “an integrated urban-rural construction land market” and give “rural dwellers more property rights”. In a sign of how eager provinces are for change, Anhui yesterday said it would set up land exchanges, cutting out the government middlemen that buy rural land zoned for building on the cheap and resell it for far more.