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a glimpse into the recent past by including the key regulation governing that area, implemented in 2001, and recently repealed.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.
From ‘Rustless Screws’ to ‘Nail Houses’: The Evolution of Property Rights in China
Abstract This article addresses property rights in China under four headings. I begin by placing the Chinese case within the larger context of property rights literature. The second section reviews the existing scholarship on property rights in China and identifies existing lacunae. The third section provides the broad contours of the contemporary Chinese intellectual and political discourse over property rights in China. And finally, I offer several cases of property rights that illustrate the variation in the scope of the concept of property rights in China and suggest possible avenues for future research. The right of property is the guardian of every other right, and to deprive the people of this is in fact to deprive them of their liberty . – Arthur Lee, Virginia, 1775 You reproach us with planning to do away with your property. Precisely so; that is just what we intend . – Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels 1 The fact that a legal or economic model does not exist for an activity or a behavior is no reason to oppose it, because the laws can develop out of experience and practice . – Wu Guoping, Yangtze Water Resources Commission 2