The government’s determination, the resistance of the owners, the possible consequences of forced demolition, and the complexity and confusion of China’s housing property rights have caused intense concern at home and abroad.
The Beijing authorities’ insistence on pushing through forced demolitions during the harsh winter season, despite heated public opinion and raging public opinion, is one of the focal points of public concern. Theories of environmental protection, destruction of the dragon line, rule of law, and suppression of the high end powerful, etc. were all in evidence.
Are “small property rights houses” illegal buildings or not? Why is the Beijing government so aggressive? What will be the consequences of forced demolition and relocation? How will it end?
Wu Qiang, an independent commentator in Beijing who recently visited the site of the demolition of Xiangtang, said that according to his observation, the local government has not taken a large-scale approach to the demolition so far.
He said, “The Beijing government is gnawing on this hard bone. Gnawing on the hard bone includes taking some of the owners who are leading the charge and arresting them in the form of criminal detention. What I have seen so far is that several large demolition machines have entered the innermost part of Xiangtang Village, demolishing it from the inside out and from the deep to the outside, which is the current situation. I should say that there is no effective resistance. Now Xiangtang Village is blocked by security guards, most owners still have the freedom to enter and exit. However, a large area has been cut off from water, electricity, gas, heating and so on. However, the other owners seem to be in a disorganized state, and there is no effective resistance, but the demolition is currently being carried out in a semi-stalemate and slow manner. The demolition is not carried out quickly and on a large scale, but one or two hooks are working in a way that we can imagine that this efficiency is quite low and the demolition process will be long. It seems that even the demolition of the Beijing government is not willing to demolish it all at once, it seems to be a demolition team face-saving project for all parties to see.”
Yu Ping, a New York-based legal scholar and independent commentator, said the issue of small property rights in rural China has been unclear and not clearly defined. This has set the stage for the authorities to take action, and the highest levels of policymaking need to take some responsibility for it.
He said, “The property rights in the rural areas have been unclear and the circulation was prohibited in the past. Later on there was a slow loosening of the flow, but it wasn’t defined. So I see the important source of Xiangtang village, the 90s of the last world, that time is the most unclear property rights in China. So the village government at that time they were trying to bring in foreigners in order to bring in capital, the construction of houses. Under the circumstances, I don’t think it was obviously illegal. So let’s be clear on this point, the constitutional issue of land ownership is a source of all confusion. Secondly, there is another very important issue, which is that the Chinese central government, all levels of government, usually look at this issue in a way that separates the relationship between different levels of government. This is very illegal to the principle of rule of law. Why? For example, it is now illegal, but who is breaking the law? In fact, it is the government that is breaking the law, and it is the government that is breaking the law in the first place when it comes to those private individuals. Each regime is a completely unified organization. You can’t say that the Beijing government doesn’t recognize the Changping district government, and you can’t say that the Changping district government doesn’t recognize the Xiangtang town government. In this way, the government is confused. Let’s use a valid analogy, for example, if you fly on an airline plane. We deal with Air China, we do not deal with a branch of Air China, it is an organic organization, that all levels of decision-making, all levels of behavior is to have a superior for it to be jointly and severally responsible. Otherwise, the regime is not unified, it might as well be called each local vassal. Therefore, I think it is not in line with the reality and the principle of fairness to deal with this issue, if we do not consider the wrong decision made by our own regime in the first place, but only to carry out the so-called forced eviction of the current homeowners. More importantly, there is a very important rule in civil law called ‘good faith acquisition’. For these homeowners, they did not know that the government was breaking the law in the first place.”
Independent commentator Wu Qiang believes that the demolition of Heung Tong will come with considerable political costs.
He said, “I believe there will be a considerable political cost to the demolition of Heung Tong. Earlier I also talked about the massive urban renewal from the late 1990s accompanied by demolition, mainly for farmers, for the poor population in the city. 2017 is for the so-called low-end population in the southern city of Beijing around the suburbs of Beijing, the urban villages and so on, which seem to be a community tumor in the municipality, chaotic, some communities where the foreign population is concentrated, and there are all demolished in the neighborhood where I live. The reason why Shantang has attracted the attention of the international community, including Chinese domestic public opinion, is that it has a major population of over 3,800 villas. From the beginning, it was mainly composed of retired officers from the Air and Sea Administration, in fact mainly divisional officers, who were attracted by the villa policy of Xiangtang and bought land in the area and then built their own houses with their pensions. In fact, these divisional officers had very limited assets and in a sense did not enjoy some of the higher benefits of the later military reform. They did have housing in Beijing though, and most of them did have Xiangtang as their second home. But that was the only asset they had. Their first homes in the city were often not of a high standard and were largely given over to their children and so on. So a good atmosphere gradually developed in Heung Tong, which attracted some people from the cultural circles in Beijing and even outside Beijing, including some retired professors from Changping University, to buy here as a retirement home. This trend was once taken as a typical example of the new socialist countryside, and this model has been extended to many places across the country in the past few years to build similar beautiful villages and beautiful towns for retirement. In fact, Xiangtang is ahead of the curve in terms of reform, and all that remains is the question of whether it is a big property right or not, and whether it is recognized by the state. But currently they think they are the red elite population of Beijing, the old cadres of Beijing, but failed to escape this hurdle.”
Yu Ping, a legal scholar, said the Xiangtang demolition reflects a fundamental legal problem in Chinese society, which is that the highest levels of China are beyond the law and not bound by it.
He said, “This issue I don’t think is an issue of equality before the law, I can understand the psychology of these people, the psychology of people screaming for the good. Because they feel pain in their hearts when they see that people with privileges or higher social status are also being cracked down. Like the anti-corruption, you put officials in jail, the people applauded. As to whether the official is really corrupt, this is not an important issue. So on this issue, I think it’s not a question of equality before the law, but a situation where it is obvious that we in China are beyond the rule of law, the executive power, or the highest absolute power, it is not constrained by the law such a situation. If you look at the decisions made in various places or the strong executive orders, most of them are beyond the law. If it is really done within the law, I think it should allow those people and groups operating under the power to go to the law. The courts should be allowed to become a basic guarantee of the rule of law, independent of the executive power, that it can deal with and resolve disputes between people fairly and in accordance with the rules. Now in China, administrative litigation is one of the most difficult litigation, why? The administrative power is too big, it is a power beyond the law. Not to mention the power of the party, it is a power that has no legal basis at all, it operates outside the law. So all signs indicate that it is not to achieve an equality before the law, but when the executive power is arbitrary, without a law to restrain it, this is very dangerous for a country, for anyone. I think people need to look at this issue from that perspective.”
Recent Comments