CCP Expropriation of Land and Livelihood

900 million people live in the Chinese countryside - over 80% of the entire population. But who has legal right over the land they work?

The land is “collectively owned.” But what does this really mean? It means is that the land is owned and managed by the government. Theoretically, every village owns its land, with each family managing a small lot via a long-term leasing contract. This is called right of “half-ownership,” stipulated by a law that deals with contracts regarding cultivable lands. In virtue of this, Chinese farmers are forced to lease their land from the government and grow the crops stipulated by the contract between them and the government, knowing that the land can be taken away from them at any moment, or the designated crop can be changed.

The farmers rights are systematically ignored by corrupt local government officials, who serve as the local hand of the central dictatorship. The obsessive race to economic growth and investment requires that an increasing quantity of land be converted to non-agricultural uses. In these cases, farmers receive little or no compensation. Then they are left without their source of income.

A report by the University of Michigan, in collaboration with Beijing’s Renmin University, reveals how local governments fraudulently acquire more than half of the lands confiscated in order to build upon them. The study, conducted from September 2004 through March 2005, reports that in 15 cities lands were illegally acquired in circa 64% of cases, while in other areas the land illegally acquired reaches 90%.

Zhang Xinbao, Director of the Supervision Bureau under the Chinese Ministry of the Land and Resources, confirmed that “the corrupted officers manage to come to terms with entrepreneurs to acquire the land as cheaply as possible” and that “the practice of classifying the cultivated lands as non-rural to facilitate their expropriation is much diffused. The local governments give only minimal indemnities – or no indemnity at all – to the farmers deprived of their lands, and then sell the lands at a high price without realizing the scheduled works.” He refers that from 1999 to 2005 over 1 million irregular acquisitions of lands took place.

Zhang Xinbao also reports that the central government experiences “difficulties in contrasting the arbitrariness of the local governments.” At least this is the official excuse of the central government.

In the name of industrial and urban advancement, at least 40 million people have been deprived of their land. The majority of them are now poor and unemployed. Such desperate condition clearly lead to increased rebellion. Chinese farmers have no true legal protection, their protests are mostly useless. They have nothing left to lose but their lives.

Zhou Yongkang, Minister of the Ministry of Public Security, declares that the number of mass protests in China are constantly increasing while also becoming more and more violent: from the 10,000 demonstrations of 1994, in 2004 protests numbered 74,000; in 2005, they numbered over 87,000. Each day the central government registers from 120 to 230 protests. Most of the protests take place in rural areas.

The expansion of this phenomenon has led international observers to belive that the campaign against Tibet could may been used as a smokescreen to hide these domestic protests.

Let’s conclude with a few recent examples:

May 2007
In protest against the theft of land perpetrated by public authorities and industries against farmers in wealthy Guandong province, the rage of the population explodes in the streets. In Dalian, a policeman kills 3 persons who dared to ask for compensation.

December 2007
At least 120,000 farmers protested, claiming ownership of the land they worked on through actions in four different parts of China. Turmoil occurred in Fujin, Heilongjiang province (northeast), in the area of the Sanmenxia dam in Shaanxi (north), in Yixing, Jiangsu (east) and in Tianjin, the seaside metropolis situated 100 kilometers from Beijing.

April 2008
During protests in Yunnan and Hainan police opened fire on the crowds.
Farmers rebelled against the expropriation of their lands, to be destined for use by the mining industry or to become golf courses. Result:1 dead and 5 wounded in Saixi; 300 wounded in Longqiao.

The communist regime deemed that it was “necessary and urgent to improve the life in the country” according to a document released previous to the People’s National Congress in 2006.

Unfortunately, the only way they know how to improve farmer’s lives is to ruin them.

Sources:
http://www.rdiland.org/PDF/2006ChinaSurvey041606.pdf
www.News.BBC.co.uk
www.washingtonpost.com
http://forestry.msu.edu/china/New%20Folder/Yolanda.pdf

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