EIGHT people have been killed in a violent land dispute in Fuyou, Yunnan province.

The municipal government of provincial capital Kunming said yesterday that villagers opposed to the building of a warehouse and distribution centre on what had been fertile farmland had kidnapped a group of building workers and burned four of them to death.

Two village residents were also killed, it said. The identity of the other two people killed was unclear.

Authorities say a standoff between villagers and the land developer had been going on since May — and when the company tried to restart building work on Tuesday locals attacked, seizing eight workers and tying them up before covering them in petrol and dumping them on a road.

Chinese media blamed the local government for the violence, with the Beijing Times saying it “had not made effective efforts to resolve the conflict between the developer and the villagers.”

And Communist Party newspaper Brightness Daily — a publication considered more highbrow than People’s Daily — said the villagers had been “impoverished” by the development plans, questioning whether they had received proper compensation after the land was taken.

Disputes over land are common in China, where agricultural land is mostly owned by local government rather than those who farm it — meaning it can be sold without residents’ permission.

Although farmers have a legal right to fair compensation when this happens, the sums they receive can vary and do not always reflect the value of the land.