Down with landlords! Did we say that?
The 16 February issue of The Economist offers another, and more detailed analysis of the issue of land ownership in rural China. It's not going to be resolved soon, and it's a good example to illustrate how the Chinese regime functions. And why is it so difficult for the monolithic Communist Party and the government it controls to control the situation?This land is my land: Peasants for privatisation
"'LAND to the tiller' has been a slogan of Chinese revolutionaries since Sun Yat-sen used it in 1924. Mao Zedong came to power in 1949 with just such a promise. Now some of China's peasants want his party to make good on the pledge. Late last year groups in different parts of China began simply claiming land as their own individual private plots.
"China's constitution decrees that rural land is owned by 'collectives'. But it does not make clear who represents these collectives. This vagueness has been one of the biggest causes of rural unrest in recent years. Rural officials, eager to make money for themselves as well as their localities, often appropriate land from farmers to sell to developers. They say they are acting on behalf of the collective. The farmers disagree. If they receive any compensation at all, it is only a fraction of the market value...
"Of the handful of incidents that have come to light where peasants have taken matters—and land—into their own hands, the first was in the province of Heilongjiang. A statement circulated on the internet in December by leaders claiming to represent 40,000 peasants in 72 villages in Jiamusi prefecture called on village representatives 'to pledge to fight to the death' to protect land from seizure by corrupt officials. It said the current system of collective ownership had turned peasants into serfs..."Isolated groups of peasants elsewhere followed suit...
"The flurry of land-rights declarations was soon suppressed...
"The central government has given a frosty response to the idea of privatising rural land. On January 30th a senior party official, Chen Xiwen, said he saw no prospect of such a move. But some state-controlled newspapers have given unusual prominence to the issue...
"The government worries that the country's food security will be jeopardised by the loss of farming land. So it is alarmed that peasants living close to cities have increasingly been behaving as if the land is theirs anyway...
"In January the central government issued a directive reminding city-dwellers that they were banned from buying village properties. But enforcement is likely to be half-hearted at best... Evicting their occupants would anger the middle classes. Their wrath frightens the party far more than the tillers'."
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Labels: China, politics, rule-of-law
posted by Ken Wedding @ 9:46 PM
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