The Economist notes that Chinese farmers desire to follow their city brothers and sisters who have gained a degree of property rights.
China?s cities have set the example. There the housing market has been in effect privatised for a decade. Land is state-owned but easily traded on long leases. The resulting boom in home-ownership has been a huge factor in the emergence of a prosperous middle class?
Unfortunately, farmers must battle local governmental authorities that control the land.
These obstacles [to private ownership] have indeed suppressed productivity, incomes and social
mobility in the countryside, and contributed to the widening gap
between town and country. Removing them would be a huge boost to
China?s economy. Introducing a proper market in agricultural land would
also do much to reduce one of the main sources of social tension in
China: land-grabs by local authorities for which peasants are often
poorly compensated, if at all. Every year, there are tens of thousands
of protests across China by the disgruntled dispossessed.
Local communist government officials see it otherwise. They see the farmers? property rights demands as interfering with their grandiose plans. The battle described here sounds like the battle property owners are having with the Chatham County Commission and county commissions and city councils all over the state. The ignorant ?peasants? in China and North Carolina just don’t understand that government plans for their property are vastly more important than their plans for their land.
THE farmers of Shangmatai township, about 90km (55 miles) south-east of Beijing, near the port city of Tianjin, are waiting anxiously for land reform. According to the peasants, the local government has seized their land to build an artificial lake in order to attract tourists. They say they have received no compensation. Late last year lawyers and academics in Beijing seized on their dispute with officials, among several others, as a reason why peasants should be given clearer ownership rights. ?Peasants want to recover the land ownership rights that belong to us,? says a statement signed by 17 farmers of Shangmatai in March.
So far, they have had no luck. Activists say they are kept under surveillance. Several claim to have been beaten by goons hired by local officials. One was detained for 18 days in April. Courts have refused to hear their case and officials have tried to intimidate a lawyer representing them, the activists say.
