Pretty much everyone knows China's economy is communist in name only, and property rights now do exist. Heck, property rights in some form have existed in virtually all communist countries in some form of another - Cuba for instance recently formally recognized people's right to buy and sell land.
Oh, I'm well aware of it. I suspect the local Party grandees saw a chance to make some filthy lucre at the expense of a paltry 20,000 people and jumped at the chance, but many of those 20,000 people objected to dispossession, starvation and being forced to work in the iPhone factory to survive.
China strikes me as a "wink and a nod" kleptocracy, with very few laws for actual ownership of property codified into law and instead implemented by webs of influence, bribery and the threat of the PLA.
The only people who were safe were the legion; after one of their AT-ATs got painted dayglo pink with scarlet go faster stripes, they identified the perpetrators and exacted revenge. - Eleventh Century Remnant
If I remember right, the land in China belongs to the state, which leases it out to people and companies and such for decades at a time. And it's not entirely clear what happens when the lease runs out.
Also, I don't think it's accurate to say that the Chinese government doesn't care about world opinion. They've gotten too good at diplomacy and soft power for that. They're just very willing to give the outside world the middle finger when they deem it necessary.
Bloomberg
China Halts Project After Village Protests Erupt in Guangdong
December 15, 2011, 10:58 PM EST
By Bloomberg News
Dec. 16 (Bloomberg) -- China’s Communist Party halted a real estate project and are investigating local officials in a village in Guangdong province where protests have led to it being cordoned off, state media reported.
Authorities in Wukan village will be questioned and the property construction plan will be stopped, China News Service said. Future land development will be undertaken only with the approval of a majority of villagers, the report said, citing Wu Zili, the mayor of Shanwei, which has jurisdiction over Wukan.
Police set up a roadblock about three miles from the fishing village, cut off supplies of food and water and prevented local boats from leaving, the Daily Telegraph reported from the area Dec. 14. The Wall Street Journal said yesterday that its reporter was blocked from entering Wukan, which is surrounded by “hundreds” of paramilitary police. Protests began three months ago due to a dispute with the local government over the sale of land, and escalated in the past week after a villager, Xue Jinbo, died in police custody, according to the Telegraph report.
The standoff is the latest in a series of demonstrations that have sparked concern among Communist Party leaders who have ruled China for more than six decades. Zhou Yongkang, a member the ruling Politburo Standing Committee and the country’s top law enforcement official, twice this month called for handling social conflicts with care.
“There is growing unhappiness within the Chinese populace at large about the behavior of Party members,” said Dean Cheng, a research fellow on Chinese political and security issues at the Heritage Foundation in Washington. “The result is growing internal pressures at the same time that you have a leadership whose legitimacy is likely to be challenged.”
Soaring Home Prices
Residential prices in the world’s second-biggest economy have risen 155 percent since 1998. Land disputes are the leading cause of unrest, according to an official study published in June. The number of protests, riots and strikes doubled in five years to almost 500 a day last year, according to Sun Liping, a professor at Beijing’s Tsinghua University.
About 50 million farmers have lost their homes in the past 30 years since Deng Xiaoping began breaking up agricultural collectives to make way for roads, factories and airports, according to the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences in Beijing. An estimated 60 million more will be uprooted over the next two decades as urbanization expands.
The government of nearby Lufeng city issued a statement on its website saying Xue, 42, died on Dec. 11 of heart failure and an initial investigation ruled out other causes of death. The body showed no signs of assault, the official Xinhua News Agency reported, citing a Guangdong provincial investigator.
Property Development
China News said the property development involved a real estate company with the same name as Hong Kong-listed Country Garden Holdings Co. A woman in Country Garden’s investor relations department who only gave her surname Zuo said the firm didn’t have a project in the area.
Calls to a number on the Lufeng government’s website went unanswered Dec. 14. Guangdong Communist Party official Wei Jianfei was unavailable for comment, said a man who answered the telephone at his office and declined to give his name.
Thousands of villagers gathered for a second day at Wukan’s village hall Dec. 14 and chanted for the return of Xue’s body, the London-based Telegraph reported. The roadblocks are having a “serious effect” on the livelihood of villagers, China News quoted Shanwei Mayor Wu as saying.
State Department spokesman Mark Toner in a Dec. 14 interview called on “Chinese and local authorities to ensure a peaceful resolution” to the situation in Wukan.
Villagers first protested in September, when they broke into local government offices, police stations and destroyed six police cars, Xinhua reported. The demonstrations were sparked by issues including land use, financing and the election of local officials, and two officials were fired following the unrest.
Police Standoff
The government then asked local villagers to appoint 13 residents to mediate in the dispute, the Telegraph reported. On Dec. 9, five of the 13 people appointed to mediate were detained by men in plain clothes, according to the report.
A thousand armed police attempted to enter Wukan on Dec. 11 and were blocked by the villagers, the Telegraph reported, citing a local resident. Tear gas and water cannons failed to disperse the crowd and after two hours the police withdrew and blocked roads to the village, according the newspaper. Wukan is currently being supplied by residents of neighboring areas carrying in food across fields, the Telegraph reported.
Xue and two others were arrested on Dec. 9 on suspicion of damaging public property and disrupting public services, according to Xinhua. He pleaded guilty to the accusations during two interrogations on Dec. 9 and Dec. 10, Xinhua reported, citing Zeng Songquan, deputy chief of the public security bureau of Shanwei city. The city of Shanwei holds jurisdiction over Lufeng and Wukan, according to Xinhua.
Shanwei, about 135 kilometers (84 miles) east-northeast of Hong Kong, was also the site of protests in 2005 during which police opened fire on demonstrators. Three of the protesters were killed, Xinhua reported in December 2005, citing the city government.
BTW, what are the chances this will information will filter to BBC and CNN? Five to one odds they don't.
Never apologise for being a geek, because they won't apologise to you for being an arsehole. John Barrowman - 22 June 2014 Perth Supernova.
Countries I have been to - 14.
Australia, Canada, China, Colombia, Denmark, Ecuador, Finland, Germany, Malaysia, Netherlands, Norway, Singapore, Sweden, USA.
Always on the lookout for more nice places to visit.
Count Chocula wrote:If nominally, the State owns all means of production including land, it would be the State's prerogative to manage and dispose of said land as its leadership wished. The proletariat have no say. So, logically following, this will not end well for the villagers of Wukan if the Communist Party desires to hold sway over their land.
Sure, but the idea is that the benevolent, highly-competent, glorious Communist goverment will weigh all concerns and come to a wise and fair decision. In practice, this may mean 'securing the stability of the country and the livelihood of its citizens by ensuring the villagers have enough land to support their community'.
Consider the way trade used to work in China - the Emperor was supreme lord over the entire world and had every right to everything in it. Upon receiving dutiful gifts from tributary states, in his infinite generosity, he would give them gifts in return of similar value. In practice, this is simply conventional trade, serving the interests of both sides.
Robert Gilruth to Max Faget on the Apollo program: “Max, we’re going to go back there one day, and when we do, they’re going to find out how tough it is.”
Winston Blake wrote:Consider the way trade used to work in China - the Emperor was supreme lord over the entire world and had every right to everything in it. Upon receiving dutiful gifts from tributary states, in his infinite generosity, he would give them gifts in return of similar value. In practice, this is simply conventional trade, serving the interests of both sides.
No, this is a trade of unequal parties, with one having ultimate curbstomp power over the other and no recourse to a set of rules by which both parties will abide...i.e. late feudalism or early mercantilism. NOT conventional trade. What's happening in Wukan seems to be more akin to a peasant uprising, with the Emperor replaced by the Party. In this case the peasants may protest loudly and long enough to keep their rice paddies and huts. Yippee.
The only people who were safe were the legion; after one of their AT-ATs got painted dayglo pink with scarlet go faster stripes, they identified the perpetrators and exacted revenge. - Eleventh Century Remnant
Ralin wrote:
Also, I don't think it's accurate to say that the Chinese government doesn't care about world opinion. They've gotten too good at diplomacy and soft power for that. They're just very willing to give the outside world the middle finger when they deem it necessary.
You are right. If they didn't care, they wouldn't have news channels putting out their point of view in ENGLISH. Its clearly targeted at a Western audience. However, like all countries China will try to calculate how much diplomatic pressure they can deal with vs what gains they get from continuing doing what they have done. So like all countries, if they judge the cost from negative world opinion isn't that high, they can ignore. Just like how the US believed it could ignore "Old Europe's" opinion about invading Iraq.
Never apologise for being a geek, because they won't apologise to you for being an arsehole. John Barrowman - 22 June 2014 Perth Supernova.
Countries I have been to - 14.
Australia, Canada, China, Colombia, Denmark, Ecuador, Finland, Germany, Malaysia, Netherlands, Norway, Singapore, Sweden, USA.
Always on the lookout for more nice places to visit.
Winston Blake wrote:Consider the way trade used to work in China - the Emperor was supreme lord over the entire world and had every right to everything in it. Upon receiving dutiful gifts from tributary states, in his infinite generosity, he would give them gifts in return of similar value. In practice, this is simply conventional trade, serving the interests of both sides.
No, this is a trade of unequal parties, with one having ultimate curbstomp power over the other and no recourse to a set of rules by which both parties will abide...i.e. late feudalism or early mercantilism. NOT conventional trade. What's happening in Wukan seems to be more akin to a peasant uprising, with the Emperor replaced by the Party. In this case the peasants may protest loudly and long enough to keep their rice paddies and huts. Yippee.
*sigh* Fine, I retract the word 'conventional'. You can replace it with 'a form of'. There is no real difference. I almost expect you to seize upon the word 'real' and claim that the difference in bytecount between the two versions is an integer, which is a real number, and thus there is, in fact, 'a real difference'.
In theory the dirty, snarling Commies can crucify every villager against that giant bottle opener tower of theirs with nails made of white phosphorous. In practice they won't do that, because their behaviour in recent history indicates that the Chicoms have pretensions to being a functional government.
Robert Gilruth to Max Faget on the Apollo program: “Max, we’re going to go back there one day, and when we do, they’re going to find out how tough it is.”
and again, since it seems to have been overlooked despite being posted two or three times, the central goverment will happily screw the local government over.
Both are corrupt, but it's the local corrupt guy you see everyday in his new car, not the don in Shanghai.
"Aid, trade, green technology and peace." - Hans Rosling.
"Welcome to SDN, where we can't see the forest because walking into trees repeatedly feels good, bro." - Mr Coffee
From what I gathered, the CPC has always been sitting on a powderkeg. China has the "Mandate of Heaven" as a concept. Which means that they tolerate power only to the point where it completely fails in some area. This led to the creation of ultimate "good Czar - bad boyar" situation, where the central CPC apparatus puts hundreds of local officials against the wall and restores the legitimacy of their top position through this very deed.
The people in China can act tough sometimes in spite of nominally "tough" laws (like e.g. striking and shitting on the not-so-enforceable strike ban) precisely because they know that if they make too much of a fuss, the top of the Chinese government will become involved. It will get into the situation, and the official in charge under whose watch people have been rebelling will be punished - not so much for his initial misdeeds, but for the very fact of causing the fucking problem.
Until you make problems for the central government in China, you can be corrupt enough. You make problems? Chances are you don't have a lot of time left. And people in China are much more collectivist than in many other places I've seen. They can literally overwhelm the police with reports and videos and shit like that if they know someone's been wronged. I saw a gathering of 20 or 30 people spontaneously compose a petition to the regional government after a person's car has been damaged with falling ice from the roof. In any other place people would just pass by and don't give a fuck.
Lì ci sono chiese, macerie, moschee e questure, lì frontiere, prezzi inaccessibile e freddure
Lì paludi, minacce, cecchini coi fucili, documenti, file notturne e clandestini
Qui incontri, lotte, passi sincronizzati, colori, capannelli non autorizzati,
Uccelli migratori, reti, informazioni, piazze di Tutti i like pazze di passioni...
...La tranquillità è importante ma la libertà è tutto!
The central government usually sets targets for the local governments to meet, eg GDP growth etc. So called autonomous regions are most probably not subjected to such stringent criteria. My impression is that the local governments do have quite a bit of leeway the same way States in Australia can decide on what infrastructure we need etc independent of the Federal government. It looks like the local government "needs" the revenue from appropriating the villager's land and selling it to developers without proper consultation, or letting the villagers get a share of the $$$$.
Frankly if they can't meet their targets without resorting such measures they can either
1. Admit to the Central government their finances are bad, and can we get bailed out, please, please, please.
2. Get someone else to run the local government, someone who can make the targets (good luck with that promotion you wanted).
However they chose option 3. Try to do so through some unscrupulous means and hope that insufficient publicity arises. In this case it failed, and frankly they deserved to be screwed over by the Central government.
That has the plus side for the Central government of looking good, well at least less corrupt than the local government. Its no surprise that one of the Villagers begged the Central government to intervene, and IIRC from Western research groups, the average citizen looks more favourably on the Central gov than the local one (also because they get the credit for the rising standard of living). The Central government has simply learnt how to "play the game", and if by behaving in this manner provides some benefit to the people they are governing, then good for them.
Never apologise for being a geek, because they won't apologise to you for being an arsehole. John Barrowman - 22 June 2014 Perth Supernova.
Countries I have been to - 14.
Australia, Canada, China, Colombia, Denmark, Ecuador, Finland, Germany, Malaysia, Netherlands, Norway, Singapore, Sweden, USA.
Always on the lookout for more nice places to visit.
The land deal inspiring the protests involved one of China’s largest property developers, a Hong-Kong listed company called Country Garden that prides itself on fast-paced construction in mostly suburban areas. Yang Huiyuan, described by analysts as the company’s chairwoman, is often listed as one of the richest women in China.
The company has faced controversy before. Xinhua, China’s official news agency, said this year that it had bought Anhui Province land to build a golf course in a deal that smacked of “the typical collusion of real estate business and local government.” The agency’s signed commentary said more than 10 government officials had been punished after that transaction and other cases of illegal purchases and use of land there.
It also seems Beijing had to deal with this corrupt officials who dealt with this company before.
So far I can only find the article from Bloomberg that Beijing has stepped in. Even more recent articles seem to be talking about events earlier. We will wait and see. I will reiterate that I will be pleasantly surprised if that news made it to BBC and CNN.
Never apologise for being a geek, because they won't apologise to you for being an arsehole. John Barrowman - 22 June 2014 Perth Supernova.
Countries I have been to - 14.
Australia, Canada, China, Colombia, Denmark, Ecuador, Finland, Germany, Malaysia, Netherlands, Norway, Singapore, Sweden, USA.
Always on the lookout for more nice places to visit.
Broomstick wrote:Bullshit. It's going to be Tienanmen square all over again, but larger. If hunger doesn't bring them to their knees the army will be called in, or the air force, and the rebellion put down. Especially now that it's getting international attention, as the very last thing the current rulers of China want to do is "look weak" on the world stage.
WUKAN, China — Two protesters who led a rebellion against officials accused of stealing farmland were elected Saturday to run their fishing village in a much-watched election that reformers hope will promote democracy as a way to settle many of the myriad disputes besetting China.
Thousands of villagers, watched by dozens of foreign and Chinese journalists, filled in pink ballots for the seven-member village committee and dropped them into metal boxes in Wukan in southern China’s Guangdong province.
By the end of the day, the election committee declared Lin Zuluan and Yang Semao the new village head and deputy head. The pair had been instrumental in organizing protests in Wukan last year that flared into violence, with villagers smashing a police station and cars. After key activists were detained in December, villagers drove out officials and barricaded themselves in for 10 days, keeping police out and holding boisterous rallies.
Unlike similar standoffs in China that often end in arrests, the provincial government conceded. It offered to stage new elections, return some of the disputed farmland and release the detained activists, as well as the body of one who died in detention.
In Saturday’s polls, villagers could vote for anyone, though 23 people announced their candidacies.
“We will do the best job we can with the power given by your great support and help,” Lin said after the results were announced.
The fact that many of the activists in Wukan’s revolt ran for membership in the village committee is a precedent. To defuse protests, local governments often make concessions, then arrest ringleaders when tempers have subsided, a practice known as “settling accounts after the harvest.”
Voters said the new leadership should improve local livelihoods.
“Because it is good for the development of our village when we can pick a good leader, right?” said Yang Zunpei, who traveled back home from the small business he runs in another part of Guangdong province. “We were suppressed by the former leaders. It was impossible for the village to have a better development. Many corrupt leaders left our village underdeveloped.”
Another ballot was scheduled for Sunday to fill five other committee positions after those candidates failed to receive the necessary majority.
China has allowed villages to hold elections for nearly three decades to select committees to manage finances, land use and other local affairs. In practice, however, the elections have been rife with problems. Elected leaders, backed by popular support, often rival local Communist Party officials. Feeling threatened, party officials have often tried to manipulate the results. The effect over time has been to sap confidence in the village elections.
By those standards, Wukan is conducting what appears to be one of China’s freest polls, and some believe it is blazing a path for others to follow. The vote attracted attention in China’s avid micro-blog community, with some contrasting it with two tightly scripted political meetings being held in Beijing. Villagers pronounced the poll open and transparent.
“Hopefully local authorities in other places of Guangdong and even other provinces will refer to Wukan as a precedent when they face similar situations,” said Li Lianjiang, an expert on Chinese local elections and protests at the Chinese University of Hong Kong.
Tens of thousands of protests occur in China each year, many of them compounded by indifferent if not corrupt local officials. As in many villages, Wukan’s troubles arose over land. Villagers said the local head, in power for decades, sold their farmland to developers without their consent.
Their ouster was hailed by more liberal Chinese state media and democratic campaigners as the “Wukan model” — a systematic approach in which the government puts the interests of villagers ahead of its usual emphasis on maintaining order, often backed by police. Wang Yang, Guangdong’s party secretary who has a reputation as a reformer, said Wukan showed that a balance can be struck between “preserving stability and preserving rights.”
Many experts, however, said it’s far too soon to say if political leaders will summon the will to replicate Wukan’s experience elsewhere.
“Wukan so far is an exceptional case,” said Li Fan, who runs a private think tank in Beijing that has been involved in local government experiments. “In this case, no matter how well the Wukan village elections proceed, the impact on the development of grass-roots democracy is very limited.”
SHOCKING. NO AIRSTRIKES. NO NOTHING. ZOMG THOSE CHINESE! SECRETLY LULLING US INTO A FALSE SENSE OF CONFIDENCE!
"If scientists and inventors who develop disease cures and useful technologies don't get lifetime royalties, I'd like to know what fucking rationale you have for some guy getting lifetime royalties for writing an episode of Full House." - Mike Wong
"The present air situation in the Pacific is entirely the result of fighting a fifth rate air power." - U.S. Navy Memo - 24 July 1944
Count Chocula wrote:Well, since China is nominally a Communist nation, with a Communist leadership, and further presupposing that under a Communist regime that there is no private ownership of property, wouldn't it follow that the villagers of Wukan do NOT have a right to their land?
If nominally, the State owns all means of production including land, it would be the State's prerogative to manage and dispose of said land as its leadership wished. The proletariat have no say. So, logically following, this will not end well for the villagers of Wukan if the Communist Party desires to hold sway over their land.
NOTE: I'm not saying I agree with the sale of Wukan's land by the Communist Party. I"m playing Devil's advocate.
All of that flows from the proposition that China is communist, which it isn't.
Vaporous wrote:All of that flows from the proposition that China is communist, which it isn't.
It is however very much a Leninist state. I was talking with a friend the other day about how communism may not have worked and Marxism is clearly a load of crap, but Leninism has turned out to be a very viable political philosophy. Which seems ironic, but I'm not sure why.
This is pre-WWII. You can sort of tell from the sketch style, from thee way it refers to Japan (Japan in the 1950s was still rebuilding from WWII), the spelling of Tokyo, lots of details. Nothing obvious... except that the upper right hand corner of the page reads "November 1931." --- Simon_Jester
To add on what Shep has posted, I posted an article earlier about how the local officials (re : corrupt ones) were being investigated. It seems a few days later they were removed from office.
"Xue Chang, chief of Wukan Party committee, and village head Chen Shunyi have been removed from their posts for allegedly violating the laws in selling land to property developers," the newspaper said.
The source is originally the people's daily, but it seems BBC that all sooo pro Chinese source is repeating that as of Dec 22 2011.
Never apologise for being a geek, because they won't apologise to you for being an arsehole. John Barrowman - 22 June 2014 Perth Supernova.
Countries I have been to - 14.
Australia, Canada, China, Colombia, Denmark, Ecuador, Finland, Germany, Malaysia, Netherlands, Norway, Singapore, Sweden, USA.
Always on the lookout for more nice places to visit.
Skgoa wrote:Mostly because you are an idiot who doesn't know the words he uses to sound intelligent.
Care to expand on that?
After reading it again, I now believe I understand what you meant to say, but by using the words you did without qualifiers, it doesn't make any sense. I would phrase it as: "While Marx's own theories of communism coming to pass naturally in a post-scarcity society were unrealistic even in the industrialized western nations he had in mind, Lenin's adapted application of them to more rural countries has turned out to be the foundation for a very viable political philosophy, at least after the chinese finally threw out the bits that couldn't work."
It's still wrong, depending on your definition of viability, but it makes sense.
This is pre-WWII. You can sort of tell from the sketch style, from thee way it refers to Japan (Japan in the 1950s was still rebuilding from WWII), the spelling of Tokyo, lots of details. Nothing obvious... except that the upper right hand corner of the page reads "November 1931." --- Simon_Jester
China punishes 20 former officials after mass protests flared over village’s land dispute
By Associated Press, Published: April 23
BEIJING — Chinese authorities have punished 20 officials and former village leaders after the community in southern China engaged in mass protests over land disputes that drove out local officials.
The official Xinhua News Agency said late Monday that the former Communist Party chief of Wukan village in Guangdong province and the former head of the village committee were expelled from the ruling party and ordered to return nearly $45,000 in what it described as illegal gains.
Six other former village officials and a dozen higher-level officials were also punished, Xinhua said, but did not provide details.
Protests in Wukan last year flared into violence with villagers smashing a police station and cars. After key activists were detained in December, villagers drove out officials and barricaded themselves in for 10 days, holding boisterous rallies.
The protests ended after provincial officials intervened and ceded to some demands.
Xinhua said authorities found that the village’s former officials had been involved in illegal transfers of land use rights, embezzling property that was collectively owned, accepting bribes and rigging village elections.
In March, two of the protest leaders were elected to run the village in a much-watched election that reformers hoped would promote democracy as a way to settle many of the myriad disputes besetting China.
Many experts, however, said it’s far too soon to say if political leaders will summon the will to replicate Wukan’s experience elsewhere.
Once again, we must be on guard against the RED MENACE, lulling us into a false sense of security.
"If scientists and inventors who develop disease cures and useful technologies don't get lifetime royalties, I'd like to know what fucking rationale you have for some guy getting lifetime royalties for writing an episode of Full House." - Mike Wong
"The present air situation in the Pacific is entirely the result of fighting a fifth rate air power." - U.S. Navy Memo - 24 July 1944
Many experts, however, said it’s far too soon to say if political leaders will summon the will to replicate Wukan’s experience elsewhere.
I think this summarises some of the problems they face. I speculate that there are power struggles within the party and that some corrupt officials are protected as it were by another faction. Now if only they had a Chinese version of Elliot Ness.
Never apologise for being a geek, because they won't apologise to you for being an arsehole. John Barrowman - 22 June 2014 Perth Supernova.
Countries I have been to - 14.
Australia, Canada, China, Colombia, Denmark, Ecuador, Finland, Germany, Malaysia, Netherlands, Norway, Singapore, Sweden, USA.
Always on the lookout for more nice places to visit.
