Large areas of land with empty houses could be cleared due to the dwindling population of rural areas in China, the Beijing News reported, based on a research report on China's rural development to be issued Monday afternoon.

As much as 7.58 million hectares of housing land, about five times the size of Beijing, could be flattened in China's rural areas as the development of industrialization and urbanization has drawn many rural dwellers into urban areas, the paper said, citing the research launched by the Institute of Geographic Sciences and Natural Resources Research of Chinese Academy of Sciences.

Apart from the outflow of rural labor, many new houses are built without removing the old ones, which takes up excess land, the research showed.

In 1995, China had a peak rural population of 860 million, and the figure will be reduced by at least 280 million by the year 2020.