property rights in china: government land seizures jan. 2005 – land protest in kunming, yunnan

Property Rights in China: Property Rights in China: Government Land SeizuresGovernment Land Seizures

Jan. 2005 – Land Protest in Kunming, Yunnan

AgendaAgenda

• Thesis StatementsThesis Statements• The ProblemThe Problem• Legal BackgroundLegal Background• Recent DisputesRecent Disputes• Social FactorsSocial Factors• Future PolicyFuture Policy• ConclusionConclusion

Thesis StatementsThesis Statements

• Governmental land seizures and the public response pose a threat to political stability in China by widening the gap between the treatment of rich/urban citizens and poor/rural citizens and diminishing citizens’ faith in government.

• The issue of property rights in China is a microcosm for the Chinese government’s struggle to reconcile capitalist aspirations with socialist values.

The ProblemThe Problem

• A government survey reported 150,000 irregular land transactions in the PRC

• Since 1991, nearly 900,000 families have been relocated in Shanghai alone

• Land protests are an almost daily occurrence, and petitions and lawsuits related to property are rising sharply

The ProblemThe Problem

• Central Government’s Reported “Public-Order Disturbances”:

1994 – 10,000 disturbances

2005 – 87,000 disturbances• More than 200 “mass incidents of unrest” occurred

each day in 2004 according to police statistics• These developments greatly undermine the

governments efforts to foster a “harmonious society”

Legal BackgroundLegal Background

• “Land is one’s flesh and blood.” The Good Earth, Pearl S. Buck

• Before the 18th Century land in China was not seen as an alienable commodity, but was governed by an inviolable patrimony

• One of Mao’s key revolutionary platforms was taking power away from landlords and giving it to the proletariat (literally ‘the without-land class’)


Original Constitution of The People’s Republic of China:

• Article 14 “The state forbids any person to use his private property to the detriment of the public interest”

• Article 90 “The homes of citizens of the People’s Republic of China are inviolable.”


Urban Property Rights• 1949-56 – Private property in urban areas, other than

that of “the enemy” was recognized by the CCP• 1956-66 – Private land was taken in to public control

either by dividing the property into private shares, or it was seized by the Housing Administration Bureau and a reduced rent was paid to the original owner

• 1966-79 – During the Cultural Revolution, the government seized private property in its entirety and converted it to public use, often as revolutionary organizations.


Urban Property Rights• 1979- The government began rapidly producing

urban housing, replacing much of the already existing facilities

• Public housing was rented to citizens at rates that in 1990 went as low as about 0.7% of average income

• Urban land was entirely unalienable until the 1980s land reforms

• March 2004 Constitutional Amendments to property rights made private ownership easier


Rural Property Rights• Farmland was originally distributed to peasants under

the 1950 Land Reform, and was defined as collectively owned land of the “People’s Commune”

• The “People’s Commune” notion has been dismissed, and farmland now is collectively owned by peasants and represented by each village government

Recent DisputesRecent Disputes

Panlong Village, Guangdong“I’m just a farmer. I know I don’t matter”

A man has his picture taken in a field outside of Panlong village. He faces away so he cannot be identified by local authorities.


Panlong Village, Guangdong

• More than 1,000 villagers blocked a highway near a disputed land on January 14, 2006.

• Police with electric batons attacked the farmers at dusk, killing a thirteen year-old girl and seriously injuring twenty others



• In 2003, village officials rented farmland to a Hong Kong textile company to build a factory

• The factory paid a rent of $3,300 per year per mu, but the villagers received $100 per year per mu

• Unclear where the rest of the money went, but local officials have started constructing new houses



• Villagers unsuccessfully petitioned Beijing

• Lack of judicial independence and local government corruption are big obstacles

• The towns Hong Kong satellite feed as been cut, and journalists who have tried to enter the village have been detained


Shanwei City, Guangdong

• December 6th protest over the construction of a power plant that displaced 40,000 people without adequate compensation

• Official report indicates 3 killed, 8 injured, but other sources indicate as many as 20 killed by members of the People’s Armed Police (PAP)


Huaxi, Zhejiang

• Protests arose over the 13 chemical plants in Huaxi that villagers claimed were poisoning their crops, causing miscarriages and making children sick

• 30,000 villagers stopped and disarmed 1,500 police from entering Huaxi during an April 2005 demonstration


Liujiaying Village, Shandong

• Farmers refused to let their fruit orchards be bulldozed after hearing how little compensation was offered by a village committee

• In 2003 the fields were bulldozed in the middle of the night


Liujiaying Village, Shandong

• Peasants who complained claim that bricks were thrown through their windows

• A 62 year-old resident claims he set out to Qingdao, the provincial capital, with a petition for redress of $1.8 million in damages

• The man was stopped by a group of men who tore up his letter and kept him in a hotel for eight days


• Other high-profile protests have taken place in Dongzhou, Guangdong (six deaths), Taishi Village, Guangdong, and villages in Hebei and Sichuan provinces

http://www.iisg.nl/~landsberger/sheji/sj-zrj.html

Social FactorsSocial Factors

• Violation of rural property rights threatens to further alienate and aggravate China’s 900 million rural poor

• Middle and upper class feel constrained by government controls on property rights, but rural poor feel betrayed by loss of their collective ownership agreement

Video of armed men fighting citizens last June in Hebei province


• Property problems expose local government corruption and central government impotency

• Protest coverage exposes problems of government-controlled media, but increasing availability of communication technologies poses a threat to censorship efforts

• Inadequacy of judicial redress highlight the lack of judicial independence


• Government land uses sometimes exacerbate already existing environmental problems (e.g. Huaxi, Three Gorges Dam project)

• Urban sprawl has sapped 5% of China’s arable land, and presents a tricky legal issue

Villagers protesting the construction of a factory in Inner Mongolia


• Inadequate property rights is one of many categories of human rights inadequacies in China that draw criticism in the international community and represent a ‘black eye’ for the Chinese government

• Unlike other human rights, property rights issues have the potential to not only undermine, but also directly affect China’s economic growth

Future PolicyFuture Policy

• Premier Wen Jiabao has acknowledged that “illegal seizures of farmland without reasonable compensation. . . is still a key source of instability in rural areas and even the whole society.''

• He also states ''Improving rural quality of life and ensuring social fairness and justice are extremely important and urgent tasks.''

• He also condemned the “reckless occupation of farmland” by urban sprawl


• Some feel that these statements admit to an inability on the part of the central government to protect its citizens welfare from corrupt government officials

• Officials have yet to offer a comprehensive course of action to remedy these ills

President Hu Jintao at a legislative meeting this March


• The urban/rural average income ratio in China is 3.3:1, one of the highest in the world

• The most recent session of the NPC focused more “social equity” than wealth creation, and property rights reform came into the limelight

• Officials indicate that they will codify and expand the 2004 constitutional amendments on property rights, potentially giving farmers more rights

• However, Hu has stated that he is “unshakably” committed to economic reform, suggesting that individual rights might still take a back seat


• Officials have been loosening government grips on urban land, but still show great reluctance to privatize rural land

• Reform was pushed by socialist thinkers, including a Beijing University Law Professor who criticizes the government of “copying capitalist civil law like slaves”

• Socialists also criticize that the new property laws do not state that “socialist property is inviolable”

• Capitalist and socialist thinkers take opposing stands, but both seem to agree that the disparity between urban/rural land law is unjust

ConclusionConclusion

To maintain a harmonious society China must reform its property rights laws to either

• protect citizens from local government abuses of power, or

• allow citizens private control over their land

ConclusionConclusion

• If China can develop a fair and successful property rights system for both urban and rural areas, many of its other social ills will be solved either in the process or as a consequence of new property rights policies

• Thank you! Questions?

property rights in china: government land seizures jan. 2005 – land protest in kunming, yunnan

Documents

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