Beijing - The central government will face increasing pressure to protect land this year, especially since cases of illegal land use are likely to become more common as regional governments continue to rely on construction projects as the chief means of ensuring the prosperity of their local economies, the country's land watchdog said.

Slightly more than 9,830 cases of illegal land use, affecting 4,891 hectares, occurred from January to March, a number that was 3.7 percent higher than it had been in the same period the year before, Li Jianqin, director of the law enforcement and supervision department of the Ministry of Land and Resources, said at a press conference on Monday.

Of the land used illegally, 1,742 hectares of it consisted of arable land, up 2.5 percent from what the number had been from January to March 2010, Li said.