The rights of ordinary Chinese citizens are on paper protected by an increasing raft of legislation implemented by the central government in Beijing. In reality, many local governments are brazenly flouting the law in their push for economic development.
The Property Rights Law of the People’s Republic of China was formally implemented on 1 October 2007. Two weeks before the law took effect local government officials in Anhui illegally demolished the home of a farmer who had refused to accept its compulsory purchase order, leading to the death of his father and the paralysis of his wife.
In December 2007, CLB Director Han Dongfang talked to Jiang Jinzhu about the illegal actions of the Chuzhou Economic Development Zone Management Commission in demolishing his family’s three-storey, 380-square metre home, along with two greenhouses on 500 square metres of land they had contracted to grow mushrooms on.
In October of 2005, the Chuzhou Economic Development Zone Management Commission began notifying residents in the Langya District of the city that demolitions would take place in order to build roads and make other improvements. Soon thereafter, Jiang’s home and contracted land were measured, along with those of his neighbours, 70 households in all. The Commission’s representatives then came out to negotiate with each family. “My home was 380 square metres,” said Jiang, “and it was all legal.” “Legal” meant that Jiang paid a fee to the local government in order to rebuild his house on that plot of land back in 2002. “They had accepted my construction fee,” said Jiang, “and now…they came over to my house to negotiate, telling me that I had built over 290 square metres of it illegally.” Although it was the same Commission that accepted Jiang’s 2,000 yuan in fees to rebuild the house in 2002, in 2005 they only acknowledged that 83.7 square metres of it were legally built.
Jiang was offered no financial compensation for the demolition of his house, except to allow for 83.7 square metres of new living space. Jiang referred them to the Demolition and Relocation Management Regulations, which call for one-to-one compensation, and demanded that he be compensated for 380 square metres of living space, but he was unable to reach an agreement with the Commission. In addition, the Commission did not offer to compensate him for the 500 square metres of land he said that he legally contracted to grow mushrooms. “It was my own contracted land,” said Jiang. “There are regulations in the Land Contract Law, and also in the Demolition and Relocation Management Regulations. They expropriated a farmer’s land!”
Jiang said that he told the Commission that based on provisions in these laws and regulations, he would have accepted seven or eight yuan for every 10 yuan in value taken: “I didn’t say, ‘I demand that you give me 10 yuan.’” But they offered no compensation whatsoever for the contract land or the value of the mushroom crop he had growing on it. “And I was a licensed operator,” Jiang said. “I had a legal permit.” Jiang had been contracting that piece of land since 1988 and, according to the Land Contract Law, his rights to the land extended to the year 2018, a 30-year contract.
Although Jiang was the only one among his neighbours to have contract land as part of the dispute, Jiang said that every household had a dispute with the Commission over the demolition of their home. According to Jiang, the Commission “lured, deceived, and frightened” people into going along with the demolitions. The lure was an incentive to move out earlier. The deception was telling each household that the other households had already agreed to the terms offered. Then they frightened people by telling them their homes would be forcibly demolished if they did not agree to the terms. “I’m telling you,” Jiang said, “for demolitions, the law requires openness, fairness, and justice – isn’t that right?” But in Chuzhou, he said, the only response of the government was “No matter what you do, you can’t beat the government; you can’t fight the Communist Party!” In the end, two households had their homes forcibly demolished, including Jiang’s. The rest of his neighbours settled with the Commission and left their homes.
Early on in the process, Jiang went to law firm in Chuzhou, who told him that the evidence he held (proof that he had paid a construction fee to build on his land allotment) proved that he had property rights, and that any demolition should be carried out according to the law. The lawyers also confirmed that Jiang should be compensated according the value of his contracted land. In 2005, the productive value of Jiang’s land was estimated at 1,620,000 yuan per year. But the Commission never responded to Jiang’s demands, or even to tell him that he would not be compensated. They had only told him he would be compensated at a depreciated amount of 8,000 yuan for the two greenhouses that he had built. “It was like I sold them the land for nothing,” Jiang said.
A number of negotiations took place between October, 2005 and June of 2007. Jiang refused the terms the Commission offered and told them that they were required to follow the law. The director of the Commission’s demolitions office, a man named Shen, told him flatly, “We don’t talk about the law when we do demolitions and relocations.” They negotiated several times without coming to an agreement. Then, at 2:00 a.m. on 26 June 2007, Jiang’s electricity was cut off. Jiang had set up the electricity line for his mushroom production. “That was a high-voltage electric line! They robbed me of 300 metres of it, in the middle of the night, while we were sleeping!” He called the police after he awoke at 5:00 a.m. but it took over three hours for them to arrive. Jiang said that he was sure it was the Commission who cut off his electricity, because the person who answered his emergency call told him so.
Just when the police were at Jiang’s home that morning, someone came with an excavator and began knocking down the poles holding up Jiang’s electric lines. “We caught the person who knocked them down,” said Jiang, “and brought him upstairs.” The police did not take him into custody; they merely told him to put the electric poles back up, and released him. When Jiang tried to pursue the matter with the police, he said he was kicked around from department to department. “Nothing ever came of it. They did nothing about the problem.”
On 13 July, when Jiang’s wife was home alone, over a dozen people arrived at the house. “We think they belonged to a local criminal gang,” said Jiang. Using an excavator, they knocked down the greenhouses and electric poles. The men said, “It’s no use calling the police. They won’t come until we finish tearing down your greenhouses.” When Jiang’s wife tried to stop them, they beat and kicked her, leaving bruises on her arms and drawing blood. Jiang raced home after hearing what was happening, and called the police on his way. The police arrived about twenty minutes later. Jiang and his wife went back to the police station with them to provide information for an investigation. But instead, Jiang said, “They came over to us and said, ‘Forget it. Go to Commission to investigate…your conflict is with the Commission, so go to them.’” When they returned home, their neighbours told them that the leader of the group that came to the house was known to participate in local organized crime. Jiang and his wife returned to the police, to provide this lead so that they could arrest him. Their response, Jiang said, was, “If you are so tough, why don’t you go and capture this mafia man?”
That afternoon a demolition crew arrived on Jiang’s land but his wife refused to let them begin their work. She blocked the work site and the demolition crew called the police, 20 of whom quickly showed up. Her older brother was also there and was arrested first. Then Jiang’s wife was surrounded by a dozen men. The deputy chief of the Economic Development Zone’s branch of the Public Security Bureau was also on the scene. Just at this time, Jiang arrived and demanded of the deputy chief that he be compensated for his greenhouses, asking, “Who are you police really protecting? My wife is blocking the site because she is defending our legal rights, isn’t that so? You can’t just arrest her.” The deputy chief’s response was, “What rights? I am exercising the dictatorship of the proletariat over your family.” There were a number of onlookers and, Jiang said, “Quite a few people heard him say this.”
Just as the deputy chief turned to leave, Jiang’s wife, in her anger, told him he was not worthy to talk about the law. The deputy chief turned back and said, “Who do you think you are talking to? Arrest her!” Jiang’s wife was taken away and detained by the Public Security Bureau for four days without a warrant.
After this incident, Jiang complained to the city of Chuzhou and its Pubic Security Bureau but to no avail. Jiang then went to the Anhui provincial authorities, which provided him with a document indicating that the local government must handle the matter according to the law. “When I came back and went to the city government,” Jiang continued, “they still didn’t handle it according to the law.”
On 21 July, a dozen thugs returned to Jiang’s property. His wife once again attempted to stop the demolition. “They beat her again,” Jiang said. “I was desperate…I climbed up on their crane so they could not work…I waited up there for over a day!” When Jiang’s elderly and sick father heard what was happening, he came out to see for himself, and “he fell and could not get back up. He started coughing up blood. He died four days later.” Jiang had spent a day and a half on the crane, but it was his father’s death that temporarily suspended the demolition work.
Jiang’s home was finally demolished on 14 September. Once again, his wife was home alone when the crew arrived. She called Jiang at about 7:40 that morning to tell him that vehicles were arriving and the Commission might be taking action. Jiang advised her to let them do it, and get out of the way, if they could show evidence of legal procedures. “All the doors were fastened shut,” Jiang said, “and my wife stood at a window and asked them if they were acting legally. They were not, after all…with no legal process whatsoever, they started smashing down the doors.” The enforcement arm of the police was present for the demolition, as well as personnel from the local police station.
“My wife was sitting on the windowsill,” Jiang said, “and below her was a leader of the Economic Development Commission shouting at her…daring her to jump down, saying ‘We don’t care, as long as you don’t jump to your death.’” The leader was Zhang Dewu, Secretary of the Commission’s Discipline Working Committee. Trembling with rage, his wife then felt someone shove her forward and she fell from the third storey. She had not seen who it was, because she was facing out the window. Her spine was fractured in three places and one vertebra was shattered. She has been paralyzed and hospitalised ever since. Awake and lucid after first arriving at the hospital, his wife heard the medical personnel say that the Public Security Bureau had given them 5,000 yuan to do their best to save her.
After Jiang’s wife was taken to the hospital, the authorities demolished the house and thousands of yuan worth of possessions. Meanwhile, she needed an operation. Jiang demanded that the Commission leadership pay for the operation, which they eventually did, very reluctantly. According to Jiang, the Director of Demolition and Relocation, Yang Jiajun commented as he was signing over the cash that “It is only a matter of money. The Economic Development Zone has plenty of money. We have a couple hundred million!” The Commission paid for the operation, as well as Jiang’s wife’s medical care and meals, which had mounted up to about 40,000 yuan.
Since Jiang had no home or livelihood, the Commission was also paying for his housing expenses at a hostel which, Jiang said, “shows that they are scared.” Jiang’s high-school age daughter was boarding at her school, and his son was in the military. After Jiang published his story on the internet, Chuzhou’s television station came out to investigate, but did not dare broadcast the story, nor did the newspapers publish it. But Jiang’s internet article had some impact on the government. On 26 September, Jiang said the local Chuzhou Daily published an article “saying the land belonged to my brother, who had run off with the money we got for the land…and that we had signed some kind of guarantee about the house.” Angered by the falsified news reports, Jiang wrote letters to six central government bureaus, none of whom had replied.
The Commission’s Yang Jiajun agreed to talk with Jiang after the incident, and asked him what he wanted. Jiang reiterated his demand for one-to-one compensation for his home. Yang said he would “report this to the leadership” but, Jiang said, nothing had been done “to this day. It has been delayed all the way up now.” Jiang had considered hiring a lawyer to help him fight for his legal rights, but felt that he could not longer afford it. Moreover, he said, collusion was so endemic that he felt he could not win a law suit what with the “officials all helping each other.” Chuzhou was the “the second most criminal place in China,” he said, and officials from the Commission had dared him to “go ahead and sue.”
Jiang placed more faith in writing to the central government and hoping they would come to investigate, because the local people would be willing to talk to them. He thought it was no use to go to local officials, because they had already lost popular support.
Han Dongfang’s interview with Jiang Jinzhu was broadcast over seven episodes in December 2007. To read the full Chinese transcript or listen to the audio file of the broadcast please go the workers’ voices section of our Chinese language website and follow the links.