[ppi] [ppiindia] The new socialist cityscape

** Mailing List|Milis Nasional Indonesia PPI-India **
** Situs resmi: http://www.ppi-india.org **
** Situs milis: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ppiindia **
** Informasi Beasiswa Scholarship: http://informasi-beasiswa.blogspot.com **
<br><br><a href="http://informasi-beasiswa.blogspot.com";><img 
src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/Info_Beasiswa.gif"; height="67" width="200" 
style="border:0" alt="Info Beasiswa Scholarship "/></a><br><br>
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/China/HC28Ad03.html


Mar 28, 2006 


 
The new socialist cityscape
By Kent Ewing 


HONG KONG - With growing rural unrest over land seizures prompting Chinese 
leaders to shift their focus to building a "new socialist countryside" in the 
recently announced five-year plan, it is easy to forget that the state of 
affairs in Chinese cities is hardly ideal. 

Disgruntled urban homeowners are also fed up - with random fees, inadequate 
services, illegal structures, unscrupulous property developers and indifferent 
local officials. Increasingly, they are turning to protest - and even violence 
- to demand their rights. Indeed, perhaps it is time for Chinese leaders to 
consider a "new socialist cityscape" in addition to their much-ballyhooed rural 
strategy. Unlike with rural protests - 87,000 incidents of which were 
officially recorded last year, a 6% increase over 2004 - no official tally is 
kept on urban unrest sparked by property disputes, but examples abound. 

At the core of the problem is the lack of any viable property law in China, 
despite the adoption of a constitutional amendment by the National People's 
Congress (NPC)in 2004 protecting private property rights. The vagueness in the 
language of that amendment, however, spurred legal scholars to draft 
legislation with more specific guarantees for property owners, and that bill 
was scheduled to be adopted earlier this month at the NPC's annual plenum in 
Beijing. 

But a funny thing happened. The draft law became the subject of an intense 
debate between reformers and conservatives that spilled over into the normally 
placid, rubber-stamp NPC and resulted in the bill being shelved for at least 
another year. 

Proponents say the bill would provide long-overdue legal recognition of private 
property rights and guarantee compensation when property is expropriated - a 
frequent occurrence and flash point for angry protests in Chinese cities, as 
well as in rural areas. But a resurgent group of Marxist conservatives argues 
that, by encouraging privatization, the law would widen the gulf between the 
rich and the poor and exacerbate social unrest. 

Drafters had been fine-tuning the bill for eight years before a prominent 
Marxist legal scholar at Peking University, Gong Xiantian, blasted the proposed 
law in an open letter posted on the Internet and also mailed to Wu Bangguo, 
chairman of the NPC's Standing Committee. Gong maintained that the bill 
violated the country's socialist constitution because it gave equal protection 
to private and state-owned property. Socialist principles dictate that the 
state's rights supercede those of the individual, Gong wrote, and conservatives 
were quick to jump on his bandwagon, effectively killing any chance the 
legislation would be passed this year. 

The conservative attack provided quite a contrast to a simple explanation of 
its merits that appeared in the government-controlled China Daily 18 months 
ago. Comparing a homeowner's property to a glass cup, the anonymous article 
said: "For example, you can keep your cup on your desk, sell it or even smash 
it, so long as you are the legal owner of the cup. Everyone else has the 
obligation not to hinder you from exercising these rights. However, if someone 
smashes it, he or she will be liable to pay the cup owner." 

At that point, Gong's letter had not been written, and no one knew that 
conservatives would muster the influence to quash the draft legislation. And, 
in the wake of their success, China's property developers are free for at least 
another year to continue dipping into a bag of dirty tricks that, while lining 
their pockets, have inspired demonstrations all over the country. 

A litany of complaints 
The fact that farmland remains collectively owned in China complicates 
peasants' claims for compensation when their land is seized for industrial 
purposes. In cities, however, private ownership is recognized. Nevertheless, 
without legal protection, such recognition has not provided much help to 
homeowners - who, according to Human Rights Watch, are routinely evicted 
without legal recourse, especially in Beijing, as the country prepares for the 
2008 Olympics to be hosted there. 

But evictions are not the only problem. Homeowners have voiced a litany of 
complaints, and the response from local governments and property management 
firms has ranged from indifference to violent suppression of their grievances. 

Just ask Li Gang, a member of a residents' committee in a development called 
Huanan New City in the southern metropolis of Guangzhou. Last month, three days 
after Li had led hundreds of fellow residents and businessmen in a protest 
against a property management company's arbitrary decision to cancel a shuttle 
bus that had previously served their estate, he found himself in a hospital, 
fighting for his life. Thugs had forced their way into his home and beaten him 
so severely that his spleen was ruptured. Emergency surgery removed his spleen 
and saved his life, but the message for like-minded homeowners was ominously 
clear. 

Li's neighbors reported seeing his attackers flee down the stairs from his home 
within view of security guards, but the guards claimed they saw nothing 
suspicious. Coincidentally, a surveillance camera that could have supplied 
valuable evidence had been re-positioned to face a concrete pillar. Police 
officers investigating the attack came up empty handed, and initially there 
were no reports about it in the mainland media, although homeowners and 
businessmen in Huanan New City were busy spreading the word, and the free press 
in Hong Kong (and overseas blogs) jumped all over the story. 

This outside pressure may help to account for the arrest last week by Guangzhou 
police of eight people in connection with the attack. Police say they are also 
searching for three additional suspects. 

Li Youcheng, who lives in Beijing's Taiping Garden, suffered a similar fate 
after he complained about the inadequate water supply at his estate. After he 
was badly beaten, the homeowners' committee that he heads sued local 
authorities over their inaction in response to residents' petitions for help - 
one of a rash of such lawsuits going nowhere in China these days. 

With property developers deep in cahoots with local governments because of the 
enormous stream of revenue they represent, residents' committees are fighting a 
David-vs-Goliath battle. Most lawsuits filed against management companies, 
which are chosen by developers and cannot be dismissed by dissatisfied 
residents, are thrown out by the courts because residents' groups have no legal 
status. 

And, since achieving this status from the Civil Affairs Bureau is a virtual 
bureaucratic and political mission impossible, the vicious circle of unanswered 
grievances and escalating protests continues, with no sign of letting up. In 
fact, by all accounts, these demonstrations are on the rise in what must be 
seen by the country's leaders as yet another example of unwelcome grassroots 
democracy at work in China. 

Hong Kong looks on
Here in Hong Kong there is more than a casual interest in property disputes 
across the border. This city, since it was handed back to China in 1997, has 
been a autonomous special administrative region where private property rights 
are guaranteed by the Basic Law. 

That guarantee appeared particularly precious last December when a Hong Kong 
woman claimed she was beaten by security guards on nine separate occasions at 
her apartment compound in Shenzhen, a booming mainland city just across the 
border, after she complained about the illegal structures a property management 
company had erected on her compound. 

Following the dismissal of her lawsuit, without comment, by a Shenzhen court, 
media pressure compelled Hong Kong's chief executive, Donald Tsang, to 
intervene, and the case has been reopened. 

Not all Hong Kong residents lured across the border by cheap real-estate prices 
have been so fortunate as to win assistance from the chief executive. Things 
got so bad in Shenzhen last October for hundreds of apartment owners from Hong 
Kong that they took to the streets in protest against management companies that 
they say overcharged them for utilities and renovations, build illegal 
structures on their compounds and provide substandard services. In the end, the 
city called in riot police to disperse the angry residents. 

With real-estate transactions plunging in Hong Kong while the Shenzhen property 
market steams along at 20% annual growth, however, it is clear that Hong Kong 
residents continue to be drawn to the mainland. When they can purchase a large 
apartment in Shenzhen with a garden and a sea view for the same price as a 
typical "shoebox" in Hong Kong, many conclude that the transaction is worth the 
risk. 

And, nearly nine years after the return to Chinese sovereignty, the people of 
Hong Kong are becoming increasingly adept at balancing the risks and the 
rewards of their unique relationship with the motherland. 

Kent Ewing is a teacher and writer at the Hong Kong International School. He 
can be reached at kewing@xxxxxxxxxxx

(Copyright 2006 Asia Times Online Ltd. All rights reserved. Please contact us 
about sales, syndication and republishing .)



[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]



***************************************************************************
Berdikusi dg Santun & Elegan, dg Semangat Persahabatan. Menuju Indonesia yg 
Lebih Baik, in Commonality & Shared Destiny. 
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ppiindia
***************************************************************************
__________________________________________________________________________
Mohon Perhatian:

1. Harap tdk. memposting/reply yg menyinggung SARA (kecuali sbg otokritik)
2. Pesan yg akan direply harap dihapus, kecuali yg akan dikomentari.
3. Reading only, http://dear.to/ppi 
4. Satu email perhari: ppiindia-digest@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
5. No-email/web only: ppiindia-nomail@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
6. kembali menerima email: ppiindia-normal@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
 
Yahoo! Groups Links

<*> To visit your group on the web, go to:
    http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ppiindia/

<*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to:
    ppiindia-unsubscribe@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

<*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to:
    http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
 


--------------------------------------------------------------------------
Situs resmi: http://www.ppi-india.org ; 
Situs milis: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ppiindia ; 
Informasi Beasiswa Scholarship: http://informasi-beasiswa.blogspot.com
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
<br>
<a href="http://informasi-beasiswa.blogspot.com";><img 
src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/Info_Beasiswa.gif"; height="67" width="200" 
style="border:0" alt="Info Beasiswa Scholarship "/></a><br>

Other related posts: