China’s New Land Use Law Makes What Was Illegal Legal

The two Chinese words for “violence” and “sudden huge profits” sound the same, and have one character in common.
China’s New Land Use Law Makes What Was Illegal Legal
The Dalai Lama (C) arrives at the Park Hyatt Hotel surrounded by agents with the Bureau of Diplomatic Security on Oct.5, 2009 in Washington, DC. The Dalai Lama on Monday started his first Washington visit in nearly two decades to lack a presidential meeting, as Barack Obama's administration insisted it still respected the Tibetan leader. (Tim Sloan/AFP/Getty Images)
Matthew Robertson
2/11/2010
Updated:
10/1/2015
<a><img src="https://www.theepochtimes.com/assets/uploads/2015/09/CHINA-C.jpg" alt="Demolition: In a typical scene in China, public security officials form a barrier to prevent residents entering an urban demolition and redevelopment site. (Blogger photo)" title="Demolition: In a typical scene in China, public security officials form a barrier to prevent residents entering an urban demolition and redevelopment site. (Blogger photo)" width="320" class="size-medium wp-image-1823173"/></a>
Demolition: In a typical scene in China, public security officials form a barrier to prevent residents entering an urban demolition and redevelopment site. (Blogger photo)
The two Chinese words for “violence” and “sudden huge profits” sound the same, and have one character in common. When it comes to the expropriation of land in China, they often go hand in hand, too. A new regulation put forward by the State Council at the end of last month was supposed to address the problem, but critics are saying that its vagaries are only too convenient for the Chinese political elite, and that it may actually legalize currently illicit behavior.

Before the communists seized complete power in China, land redistribution schemes engineered in Communist Party-controlled areas worked in favor of Party cadres, who got the most fertile lands and the best houses.

More serious land reform came in later political campaigns. It wasn’t until 2007, after nearly a decade of discussion and intraparty bargaining, that an updated and modernized property law was released.

Even so “expropriation of land in China has become one of the most polemical social issues,” according to an article by the Australian National University’s Peter Yuan Cai.

Forced housing demolitions can include tactics like switching off the power or water of whole blocks of houses, and sending thugs to harass and intimidate residents leading to violent confrontations. All this meant a new law was needed.

The recent “Ordinance of House Collection and Compensation on State-Owned Land (Draft For Feedback Collection)” was announced on Jan. 29 and was followed by a stream of commentary from experts and citizens inside China.

The Guangzhou-based Southern Metropolis Daily, provided a technical analysis of the letter of the regulations, pointing out where definitions of certain key terms remained unclear, and what the consequences for this would be as the law played out on the ground.

Liu Feiyue, a human rights activist in Hubei Province, pointed out that the regulations now cover business-related forced demolitions, which he says provides a legitimate excuse for relocations for business development.

“The new regulations are supposed to focus on collecting state lands for the public welfare. Including the business sector is in reality a silent approval for forced demolition due to business needs,” writes Liu.

Liu believes house demolition for business needs should be strictly regulated by the market. In China, laws are notoriously hard to enforce at all levels. “We are concerned that the new regulations will not force the local governments that collude with businesses to give up their vested interests,” said Liu.

Wang Cailiang, a professor of the law school at Beihang University, says the calls for public consultation are welcomed, but the proposal itself is a step back, according to BBC Chinese. The story of private developers colluding with local officials to hire thugs and violently evict recalcitrants who refuse to move out of their homes is so common as to be a cliché in China.

Behind the “sudden profits” lies violence, Wang says. Resistance to demolition and the state-sanctioned violence that accompanies it often takes extreme forms, including self-immolation and suicide, as an abundance of Chinese media reports can attest.

Part of the controversy relates to the meaning of “public interest.” Houses can be demolished and residents evicted as long as the purpose of the land is for things like national defense structures, national resources, roads and railways, irrigation works, educational facilities, and so on.
The new proposed regulation maliciously expands the concept of the public interest in land seizures, according to Mr. Wang, changing it to encompass all reasons currently given for housing demolition today in China, including the currently illegal ones.

This covers new buildings for the local government, cheap accommodation, “the needs of the housing market,” among others.

Chen Qiyong, a victim of forced house demolition in Shanghai, concurs with Mr. Wang’s assessment that the new regulations are effectively a protective umbrella for companies and local officials.

“[The new law] is the same difference. We are still going to get robbed and the new laws legalize it,” said Chen.

“The government should solve previous problems before making more laws,” said Li Huifang, a petitioner from Shanghai, “The corrupt officials and illegal businesses should return what has been taken from the people and be punished. How many people were imprisoned and tortured trying to protect their houses and lands? They should be redressed.”
Matthew Robertson is the former China news editor for The Epoch Times. He was previously a reporter for the newspaper in Washington, D.C. In 2013 he was awarded the Society of Professional Journalists’ Sigma Delta Chi award for coverage of the Chinese regime's forced organ harvesting of prisoners of conscience.
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