Eggs Hitting the High Wall: A Brief Overview of Land Acquisition and Forced Demolition in Mainland China

To tell the full story of land acquisition and forced demolition in mainland China over the past decade or so, all the bamboo on the Southern Mountain would not suffice to record even a ten-thousandth of it.

When I visited Taiwan last year, I heard Attorney Li Ming-chih at the Taipei Bar Association describe her experience in urban renewal cases in Taipei. Her deep sympathy for the homeowners subject to urban renewal and her indignation toward developers and the government came straight from the heart, and we felt it too. Yet the mainland lawyers traveling with me all sighed: Taiwan really is a civilized place; even its forced demolitions are this civilized.

From a certain angle, the history of urban development on the mainland is a history of land acquisition and demolition written in blood and tears, and it is still being written.

Land on the mainland is either state-owned or collectively owned. Specifically, all urban land belongs to the state; land outside cities (in rural areas) is collectively owned, that is, by villages and villager groups under townships. Private individuals have no land ownership. Individuals may hold use rights to urban land; in rural areas, farmers hold use rights to homestead plots of limited size and contracted management rights to other land (essentially a form of use right). Urban land use rights may be transferred; rural homesteads may not (when no longer used, they are reclaimed by the collective and reallocated to other members), and contracted management rights may be transferred only strictly among members of the collective.

Given this system of land ownership, acquisition and demolition fall roughly into urban demolition and rural land acquisition and demolition. Local governments on the mainland also operate a land reserve system, under which the government stockpiles land for construction use.

Urban Demolition

A typical acquisition and demolition project goes roughly like this: a developer has its eye on a plot of land it wants to develop and applies to the government for a demolition project (if the plot is already in the land reserve, it applies to the government's land reserve center). Once the government approves the project, the developer starts the demolition work, chiefly negotiating relocation and compensation with the residents. Local governments set compensation standards according to local conditions, and compensation is basically paid according to these standards. But many residents refuse to move because the compensation is too low (the cause of the vast majority of demolition disputes). This obstructs the project and seriously harms the developer's economic interests, so the developer will use every means to push the demolition forward. And because developers' interests are always deeply intertwined with those of local governments, local governments also become deeply involved in forced demolitions. The result is fierce conflict between residents facing demolition on one side and developers plus local governments on the other. And because urbanization on the mainland is proceeding at full tilt, and local government revenue and officials' performance records depend heavily on land development, demolition has produced a vast amount of social tension and conflict. This page is written in the blood and tears of those whose homes were demolished.

Rural Land Acquisition and Demolition

The other type is the expropriation of rural collective land. On the mainland, the land market is divided into a primary and a secondary market. Local governments monopolize the primary market: rural collective land can only be expropriated by local governments. A developer wanting land to develop must buy it from the local government's land reserve center. And how do the prices compare? Under current standards, when local governments expropriate collective land, they compensate the rural collective roughly RMB 10,000 to 100,000 per mu (standards vary by province and city, depending on location). When the local government then sells the land to a developer, the price rises tenfold or a hundredfold.

It is precisely this deep dependence on profits from land development that gives local governments a strong urge to acquire and develop land. But since the government cannot itself engage directly in commercial development, developers and local governments form a community of interests. Facing this community of interests are vast numbers of atomized people whose land and homes are taken: on one side a strong, thick wall; on the other, one egg after another.

Yet what is taken from those whose land is acquired and homes demolished is their greatest means of livelihood: homes and land inherited from their ancestors and meant to be passed down (even if they hold only use rights). They may be only eggs, one after another, and most eggs dare not strike the rock, but countless eggs have nonetheless been dashed against the wall. The countless tragedies on the mainland over the past decade and more are all the story of eggs hitting the high wall.

Eggs Hitting the Wall

The ways eggs hit the wall include, but are by no means limited to, the following:

1. Litigation

   In such cases, urban residents can only first apply to the government's land administration department for an administrative ruling on their dispute with the developer, and if dissatisfied may file an administrative lawsuit (against the ruling); residents cannot even face the developer, the party actually carrying out the demolition, in court. Rural land disputes can only be litigated by the collective that owns the land, the village or villager group; but the collective is an abstract concept, and its leaders are often bought off, so villagers whose interests are harmed cannot sue in the collective's name. Moreover, even when a suit can be filed, the court's judgment is often not in favor of those facing acquisition and demolition, because when mainland courts handle such cases, local government interests are involved and fairness to those affected often cannot be guaranteed. Some courts have even posted notices on their gates saying they will not accept land acquisition and demolition cases.

2. Resistance

   Turning one's home into a fortress to resist the demolition crews is practically a small war. Some demolition workers have been injured or killed by residents while forcibly entering to demolish, but far more often residents are violently driven out, beaten, and arrested by the demolition crews, with countless deaths and injuries, and not a few sentenced to prison. And this resistance invariably ends in defeat.

3. Self-immolation (self-injury, self-mutilation, or protesting with one's life by other means)

   This is the strongest weapon of resistance the weak can wield. It is far too tragic, yet it happens again and again, shaking the nation's nerves each time. After China Central Television broadcast footage of Tang Fuzhen, a resident of Chengdu, Sichuan, setting herself on fire to resist forced demolition, it sparked nationwide outrage against forced demolition for a time; but after the outcry, the forced demolitions continued.

4. Petitioning

   Petitions arising from land acquisition and demolition make up a large share of the mainland's "army of petitioners." It is a road without dignity and without end. Petitioners travel again and again toward the provincial capital and Beijing, only to be intercepted again and again by personnel sent by local governments (which call it "receiving" petitioners) and brought back. No one can count how many petitioners along the way have been violently beaten, held in black jails, detained, sent to labor camps, or even sentenced to prison.

5. Violence

   The most extreme example is Qian Mingqi, a resident of Fuzhou, Jiangxi, who, after exhausting all the above means without obtaining reasonable compensation, bombed the relevant government offices, killing 4 and injuring 9; Qian himself also died in the explosion.

Of course, these methods are not entirely without effect; the problems of those facing demolition may be resolved along the way. But very, very many people become trapped in these rights-defense predicaments, dragged out over long periods in wretched misery. From the moment their homes and land are designated for acquisition and demolition, their lives are thrown into complete turmoil, and they enter a life utterly unfamiliar to them, full of grief, indignation, and pain.

A Sense of Dispossession

In mainland land acquisition and demolition, apart from a very few residents who refuse to move out of attachment to their old homes, most conflicts arise over compensation. Because the compensation standards set by governments are generally low, those whose land is taken share a widespread sense of dispossession. This is one of the areas where today's mainland society most craves fairness and justice.

Of course, the central government has made many efforts to resolve the social conflicts caused by land acquisition and demolition, such as amending relevant laws and regulations, defining the scope of acquisition and demolition (which must be for the public interest), strictly forbidding local governments from taking part in forced demolitions, and appropriately raising compensation standards. But the results have been minimal.

It is foreseeable that disputes and conflicts arising from land acquisition and demolition will remain a major social conflict on the mainland for a long time to come. This page is far from finished.

May 30, 2013, Beijing