About last year, Kong photographed a file online, mainly because the seller mentioned in the description that the file contained a personal letter from He Lezhi, a scholar of art history in China, and bought it for this reason, but of course also mainly because the file was not expensive. After I came back and studied the file carefully, I found that besides the dozens of materials written by He Lezhi himself, what was more valuable was the content of the file, which was a case study reflecting the transformation of Chinese houses in a special era. The whole file is composed around the property rights of 30 Yihe Road in Nanjing and the conflicts between the landlord and the tenant, and one can clearly see how this small privately owned house built during the Republican era was transformed step by step into a state property.
During the Republic of China period, Nanjing Yihe Road was the same as Zhongnanhai in Beijing now, and it was the place where senior government officials lived, and it was called the public residence area. According to the statistics, there are many famous people such as Chiang Weiguo, Marshall, Chen Cheng, Gu Zhutong, Tang Enbo, Yan Xishan, Ma Hongkui, Wang Jingwei, Hang Liwu, Zou Lu, Xue Yue, Hu Lian, Zhou Zhirou, Niu Yongjian, etc. There are also many embassies (consulates) of Canada, Mexico, Brazil, Portugal, India, Pakistan, the Philippines, etc., and these embassies are close to No. 30 in terms of number, such as Gu Zhutong Mansion is No. 34, Wang Jingwei Mansion is No. 38, Yan Xishan Mansion is No. 8, Chen Brei Mansion is No. 4, etc. Most of these public houses were built after the Kuomintang built the capital of Nanjing, and the Time of completion was around the mid-1930s, and 30 Yihe Road was also built by this group at that time.
Mr. Geng Jihe, who graduated from Northern Jiaotong University in 1916, went to England in 1919 to work as an intern for the Marconi Radio Company, and returned to China in 1922 to work as the director of the international radio station in the three northeastern provinces and the assistant director of the Ministry of Communications. He returned to Nanjing in 1943 to recover from illness and died in 1949. During the period when the Kuomintang was developing the capital Nanjing, Mr. Geng Jihe bought the land at 30 Yihe Road and built this house through a bank loan. After the liberation, the owner’s Family really lived in their own small house, and in 1951, when Geng Jihe’s wife died, his son Geng Qi inherited the property.
In April 1958, Mr. He Lezhi’s family moved in, also paying rent to the Geng family, and later three other families moved in.
The archives record that in August 1958, Geng Qi, who was still in Baoding, filled out the “Application for Socialist Reform of the House” form, and from then on, the house was included in the socialist housing reform movement. The socialist transformation of the house was carried out in accordance with the “Opinions on the Basic Situation of Private Urban Property and Socialist Transformation” drawn up by the Second Office of the Central Secretariat on January 18, 1956, which pointed out that “the contradiction between private ownership of private urban housing and socialist construction is becoming increasingly acute, so it is necessary to carry out socialist transformation of private industry and commerce at the same time. At the same time, the private property in the city for socialist transformation. The form of transformation is: the state leases, i.e., the state carries out unified leasing, unified distribution and use, and repair and maintenance.” In other words, at the same time as the three major socialist transformation movements of the time, private housing was also transformed to become state-owned property. Of course, this transformation of housing property rights was a process that was carried out gradually, but there was only one ultimate goal, the elimination of private ownership and the return of property rights to the state. In hindsight, this movement was indeed a state dispossession of citizens’ property, all the more ironic because the owner of the property rights had to apply for it!
After August 1958, except for a few houses reserved for the Geng family, the rest of the house belonged to the government, and the steps taken were that the tenant no longer paid rent to the landlord but to the state, and the state gave 20% of the rent received to the landlord at a fixed interest rate, while the property right belonged to the state. This fixed interest was also cancelled after the Cultural Revolution began.
I don’t know if the house was returned to Geng’s family after the reform and opening up era, but according to the later national policy, I’m afraid the house still belongs to the state.
From the Internet, I found a chronology of events of the house renovation movement, you can look at.
On January 18, 1956, the Second Office of the Central Secretariat drew up “Opinions on the Basic Situation of Private Urban Property and Socialist Transformation”, which concluded that “the contradiction between private ownership of urban private housing and socialist construction is becoming increasingly acute,” and therefore “private industry and commerce must be Therefore, “it is necessary to carry out socialist transformation of private property in the city at the same time as socialist transformation of private industry and commerce.” The form of transformation is: “State renting, i.e., unified leasing, unified distribution and use, and repair and maintenance by the state.” It is the most initial document for the half-century-long phenomenon of rented housing.
On June 4, 1958, the Leading Group of Beijing Private Housing Reform formulated the “Regulations on Several Specific Policy Issues of Socialist Reform of Private Rental Houses” to quantify the starting point of reform as follows: “Those who have enough fifteen rooms (natural rooms), not enough 250 square meters, or enough 250 square meters but not enough fifteen rooms are included in the target of reform and will be reformed. ” Later, on June 20, 1958, additional regulations were formulated to conditionally relax the starting point for renovation to “those whose houses are a whole house or more than ten houses.” Later, the provinces and municipalities directly under the Central Government followed suit, and the renovation quickly spread throughout the country.
On January 13, 1964, the State Council forwarded to the State Administration of real estate a report on the socialist transformation of privately owned houses: “Some homeowners think that the houses rented by the state have not yet been transformed into a system of universal ownership and are still owned by individuals, and often demand the return of houses rented by the state on the grounds that the population has increased and there is not enough housing for them. ” “These situations reflect the sharp struggle between two roads in the work of private housing transformation.” Therefore, it is necessary to “gradually change the ownership system of urban housing occupiers (actually owners, here it is changed to “occupiers”) by a method similar to redemption, …….” This is the first document that deals with the issue of ownership of rented houses, and is also the basis for the current refusal to return the houses.
On September 18, 1964, the Supreme People’s Court’s approval of “The owners of state-leased houses have actually lost their ownership rights” said, “The owners of state-leased houses have actually lost their ownership rights.”
On September 24, 1966, the document “Zhongfa (1966) No. 507” stated that “Recently, in the Great Proletarian Document Revolution, the Red Guards and revolutionary masses …… have put forward many initiatives, many of which are feasible and should be adopted. Many of these initiatives are feasible and should be adopted and handled,” and therefore made: “Public-private joint ventures should be changed to state-owned enterprises, and all fixed interest on capital should be abolished.” The Cultural Revolution document did not deal with the issue of rented houses, but it was this document that stopped paying rental income to owners of rented houses and refused to return their properties, even today.
On February 16, 1985, the Ministry of Urban and rural Construction and Environmental Protection’s “Opinions on Handling the Legacy of Socialist Transformation of Urban Private Housing” said, “All private rental housing that has been incorporated into the socialist transformation belongs to the state.”
On October 22, 1987, the Supreme Court and the Ministry of Urban and Rural Construction and Environmental Protection jointly issued a notice on matters related to the handling of private properties in the review of historical cases, emphasizing that the original document of the Central Government should continue to be implemented.
In 1988, the Supreme Court issued a statement that “the people’s courts shall not accept” cases involving rented houses.
On September 16, 1989, the Ministry of Construction’s “Notice on Making a Good Start and a Good End in Handling the Legacy of Urban Private Housing” again emphasized the need to implement the spirit of its previous documents.
It is not known how the old man Geng Qi is doing now. I found out on the Internet that there is an old man named Geng Qi in an old people’s Home in Nanjing, and his age is 86, the same age as Geng Qi in the file.
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