Central Government Documents on Property: Demolition, Relocation, and Compensation (I)
The first of three issues on demolition, relocation, and compensation in China provides a glimpse into the recent past by including the key regulation governing that area, implemented in 2001, and recently repealed. Other government issuances translated in this issue involve more detailed provisions on surveying and appraising properties as well as other guidelines for those performing such work. The first public draft of the new regulation on expropriation and compensation attempts to rectify shortcomings of the 2001 regulation by setting forth "public interest" requirements for expropriating property, and by requiring agencies performing expropriation duties to provide compensation prior to commencing the demolition process. An emergency notice promulgated after the issuance of the first draft but prior to the final, implemented new expropriation regulation, underscores concerns at the State Council level that agencies at lower levels, particularly at the municipal level and below, are at least acquiescing, if not willfully participating in wrongful expropriation and demolition practices in the rush to procure land for initial development or redevelopment. The next two issues will include the new expropriation regulation, as implemented, as well as province-level regulations and issuances, and judicial opinions in demolition and compensation cases.
Nail-Houses, Land Rights, and Frames of Injustice on China's Protest Landscape
This article highlights the way in which Chinese protestors resisting home eviction and demolition have begun to develop innovative, media-savvy tactics for winning public sympathy for their causes and framing their plights as unjust, and considers the political implications of this trend.
Against the Law: Labor Protests in China's Rustbelt and Sunbelt
argument in a short review. He paints a vivid and detailed picture of the intense negotiations that took place in and out of doors and subtly tracks the contours of a process that was fluid, contingent, contested and shaped by its setting. And, in the end, he has written a provocative, engaging book that will help reset the agenda for future debates about the relationships between places and people, the coming of the Revolution, the importance of the cities, and the development of a civic consciousness both before and after the Revolutionary crisis. Michael A. McDonnell University of Sydney a 2009, Michael A. McDonnell