Amend law to prevent forced demolitions
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But in some developed countries such as Canada, the government expropriates homes and land only to build public facilities such as roads, subway lines and government buildings. But in China, the legal concept of "public good" is so wide that it encourages local governments to expropriate land and buildings and offer them to private parties to build apartment or office buildings, shopping malls and other structures from which they can make huge profits.
This is too wide a concept of eminent domain or "public good". It gives open invitation to local officials to abuse the rights of ordinary people by expropriating their homes or land to satiate the hunger for profit of developers and other realty-related businesspeople.
By acquiring land and buildings, the officials may be seeking to increase local GDP. Or, corruption may be prompting them to help money-hungry real estate companies evict homeowners. In both the cases, it's ordinary people who suffer.
To stop all this, the central government needs to amend some of its laws. The amended law should explicitly prohibit the expropriation of land or homes to further the economic interest of private parties. In other words, the law needs to limit acquisition of land and homes only for building new or expanding existing roads, schools, subways, government buildings and other essential public structures. Acquisition of land and houses to help private parties make money must be banned, and violators should be severely punished. Free consent of homeowners and land users must be the only basis on which land or homes can be expropriated.
The central government released the draft on new "Regulations for Expropriation and Compensation for Houses on State-owned Land" on Jan 29 to solicit public comment. The draft includes proposed regulations that guarantee better control on expropriations and demolitions, and a narrower definition of "public interest" for land expropriation in urban areas.
But the draft does not rule out expropriation for commercial purposes.
It does not address expropriation of land and houses in rural areas, either. Nor does it have any provision of punishing local officials who violate the rules.
The government proposals are a step in the right direction but need to go further. Every person should have the right to accept or reject transferring his/her land-use rights when real estate developers or their agents approach them. Any other arrangement is likely to create a highly unequal relationship in which powerful private companies and local officials can all-too-easily abuse people's rights to make profit.
The author is a Canadian teacher in China.
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