Eva Cheng
Evictions and other forms of land seizure — approved by if not instigated by corrupt officials — have become such a social problem in China that the State Land and Resources Department on February 4 issued two decrees in an effort to stamp out the practices. The decrees take effect on March 1.
Evictions are common in rural and urban areas, and conducted by "independent" property developers seeking access to land that will deliver them a hefty profit. However, the developers' actions would not be possible without the support of corrupt local authorities and/or individual officials.
While all land in China remains nominally state property, since the early 1990s the right to use land has increasingly become tradeable. This trade in land use is now a multi-billion-dollar market. The auction of the land-use rights to a 308,700-square-metre residential site in Beijing on December 8, for example, fetched the Beijing authorities 905 million yuan (about A$142 million), more than doubling the Y430 million offer price.
The February 4 decrees require, for the first time, the publication by all relevant authorities of land-use plans and mineral resource distribution maps covering their jurisdictions. The decrees also demand transparent redevelopment approval procedures and penalty rules, as well as clear rules governing land resumption and compensation for the affected parties.
These requirements are indicative of how the local bureaucrats have been able to make up the rules as they go.
The decrees also specify that petitions or complaints by people affected by land-use changes must be processed immediately and addressed within definite time limits.
In the first eight months of 2003, the state bureau designated to hear public grievances received 11,641 letters of complaint and conducted 5360 interviews with petitioners. This represents a jump of 50% and 47% respectively, compared to the same period in 2002.
With the rising commodification of housing resulting from Beijing's capitalist "reforms", property price bubbles are swelling in many Chinese cities. People's existing homes get in the way of developers' and government officials' plans for lucrative new, high-density housing projects.
Rural residents worst off
Rural households on the city fringes are worst off. Under China's strict administrative division between urban and rural areas, rural residents have far less entitlements. "Relocation" compensation, if it is paid at all, is insufficient to cover the costs of city housing, or even to find a comparable home in the evicted families' original area. As a result, rural people are forced to move to more remote locations or live on the city streets.
According to the February 2 People's Daily, 40 million rural residents are estimated to have lost their land due to "redevelopment" projects.
Eviction is especially devastating for rural people, because the land is not only their home, but their livelihood and source of retirement income. Since the collectively owned and run people's communes were dismantled in the early 1980s, each rural family has been entitled to the use of a small plot of land.
While there are supposed to be mandatory requirements for compensation and/or relocation when people's land is resumed, property developers only observe them in a token manner, if at all.
Moreover, not only is the highest compensation rarely granted, but no payment is guaranteed, even if promised. The widespread use of thugs to violently enforce evictions makes decent compensation even harder to come by.
China's Phoenix Weekly reported on October 15 the case of Yang Fan, a professor at a Beijing's university who has been evicted twice since 1995.
On the first occasion, Yang and his family withstood intimidation by the developer's hired thugs for two years, including having his water and power supplies cut every second day and persistent disturbances during sleeping hours. Finally, he was allocated a replacement home in a different area of Beijing. A neighbour, however, received no compensation.
On September 18, a deputy head of China's construction department threatened heavy punishments for illegal evictions and the associated use of thuggish tactics. However, late at night the next day, according to October 15 Phoenix Weekly, a family targeted for eviction in Beijing had its door forced open. Family members were blind-folded, muzzled and had their hands tied before being forced out of their homes. Within the next 40 minutes, their home was bulldozed to the ground.
On December 18, Asia Times also reported dawn raids of households in the Xicheng district of Beijing by 20 or so "bully boys", which caused mass destruction and injured many residents. "Before leaving, they threatened: 'This is what you pay for staying here [refusing to move]. Get your arses out of here, or wait for our visit next time!'", the magazine reported.
Quoting the semi-official China Economic Times, Asia Times added that the "relocation of the China World Trade Centre alone has claimed six lives and caused dozens of injuries".
Officials
Property developers could not get away with these abuses without the active support of the local authorities. Not only are there mutual back-scratching and kickbacks, but there is also an increasing overlap in their membership.
According to the December 18 Asia Times, "local governments have been strongly implicated in several major cases of land abuse recently investigated by the Ministry of Land and Resources".
So far, resistance to the evictions has mostly been by desperate individuals, or by way of petitions.
On August 21, 39-year-old Wang Biao killed himself in a relocation office of Nanjing, Jiangsu province, in protest against being evicted. On September 15, Zhu Zhengliang, a peasant from Anhui province, set himself on fire in a similar protest in Beijing's Tiananmen Square.
Some residents have launched legal actions against local authorities, with little success.
For centuries, an appeal to the "high officials of the national capital" has been a way to deal with grievances in China. Beijing is keen to encourage that "tradition", and has set up a special bureau to handle petitions from around the country.
Meanwhile, most of the evicted are joining a growing impoverished underclass.
From Green Left Weekly, February 11, 2004.
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