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Wednesday, 3 February 2010
Beijing proposes major changes to land seizures
China’s Cabinet suggested major changes yesterday to the way land is seized for redevelopment, in an attempt to bring calm to an issue that has sparked growing violence.
BEIJING: China’s Cabinet suggested major changes yesterday to the way land is seized for redevelopment, in an attempt to bring calm to an issue that has sparked growing violence.
Developers and demolition companies would be banned from using violence or shutting off water and electricity to force residents from their homes, according to the changes proposed by the State Council, or Cabinet, and posted on its website.
All are common tactics in China, where hundreds of thousands of people have been uprooted for urban redevelopment, fuelled by government lending and often with the approval of local officials.
The proposal also calls for compensation for seized property to be above its market price, an effort to calm protests over little or no payment. And more than 90 per cent of residents in places marked as old or dangerous would have to agree to demolition first - even for projects judged to be in the public interest.
China Central Television led its midday news broadcast with the proposals.
‘Definitely these would have helped us,’ said Mr. Zhang Weimin, who camped out in his unlit, unheated Beijing restaurant for weeks, resisting threats from what he and other holdouts suspected were hired thugs, before their strip of businesses was torn down this month. ‘What happened to us would have been a violation.’
Property seizures, often with little or no compensation, have caused widespread protests. Late last year, a video and photos of a woman standing on a roof and setting herself on fire in protest in the south-western city of Chengdu spread across state-run media.
Shortly after that, a man protesting another demolition set himself on fire in Beijing. Unlike the woman, he survived.
Five law professors from China’s top university, Peking University, then took a rare public stand, asking the National People’s Congress (NPC) Standing Committee to change a regulation they said encouraged abusive tactics by developers and led to ‘mass incidents’ and ‘extreme events’. Meetings with legislative officials from the State Council followed.
Professor Shen Kui, the one who organised the petition, praised the government’s speed in dealing with the issue, but said it can still forcibly demolish a property if it thinks its decision is fair and people have been compensated.
Yesterday’s proposals are open for public comment until Feb 12, the statement on the State Council’s site said. The NPC, or Parliament, has already authorised the State Council to enact regulations on the issue after the comment period is over.
Property seizures are supposed to be limited to projects in the public interest, and seizing land and negotiating with residents for compensation is the government’s job under China’s property law.
But a regulation issued in 2001 allows developers to step in and handle those negotiations, the professors argued. Developers are sometimes accused of using hired thugs to threaten residents, sometimes with violence.
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Beijing proposes major changes to land seizures
AP
30 January 2010
BEIJING: China’s Cabinet suggested major changes yesterday to the way land is seized for redevelopment, in an attempt to bring calm to an issue that has sparked growing violence.
Developers and demolition companies would be banned from using violence or shutting off water and electricity to force residents from their homes, according to the changes proposed by the State Council, or Cabinet, and posted on its website.
All are common tactics in China, where hundreds of thousands of people have been uprooted for urban redevelopment, fuelled by government lending and often with the approval of local officials.
The proposal also calls for compensation for seized property to be above its market price, an effort to calm protests over little or no payment. And more than 90 per cent of residents in places marked as old or dangerous would have to agree to demolition first - even for projects judged to be in the public interest.
China Central Television led its midday news broadcast with the proposals.
‘Definitely these would have helped us,’ said Mr. Zhang Weimin, who camped out in his unlit, unheated Beijing restaurant for weeks, resisting threats from what he and other holdouts suspected were hired thugs, before their strip of businesses was torn down this month. ‘What happened to us would have been a violation.’
Property seizures, often with little or no compensation, have caused widespread protests. Late last year, a video and photos of a woman standing on a roof and setting herself on fire in protest in the south-western city of Chengdu spread across state-run media.
Shortly after that, a man protesting another demolition set himself on fire in Beijing. Unlike the woman, he survived.
Five law professors from China’s top university, Peking University, then took a rare public stand, asking the National People’s Congress (NPC) Standing Committee to change a regulation they said encouraged abusive tactics by developers and led to ‘mass incidents’ and ‘extreme events’. Meetings with legislative officials from the State Council followed.
Professor Shen Kui, the one who organised the petition, praised the government’s speed in dealing with the issue, but said it can still forcibly demolish a property if it thinks its decision is fair and people have been compensated.
Yesterday’s proposals are open for public comment until Feb 12, the statement on the State Council’s site said. The NPC, or Parliament, has already authorised the State Council to enact regulations on the issue after the comment period is over.
Property seizures are supposed to be limited to projects in the public interest, and seizing land and negotiating with residents for compensation is the government’s job under China’s property law.
But a regulation issued in 2001 allows developers to step in and handle those negotiations, the professors argued. Developers are sometimes accused of using hired thugs to threaten residents, sometimes with violence.
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