China to Discuss Property Rights Legislation

As more and more Chinese people start to own significant properties like homes and vehicles, their ownership calls for recognition and protection

When China’s National People’s Congress opens its annual assembly in March, it will review and very likely pass a couple of new legislations, including the much anticipated and debated Property Law.

Right now, the draft has been sent to over three thousand People’s Congress representatives around the country for preview. But people are calling the newest draft to be released to the public, not just to legislators.

The law addresses issues like land property, compensation for government acquisition of private properties and farmers’ rights to use land under contract with the state. Initiated in 2002, the legislation has gone through seven reviews by China’s top legislators, setting the record for a single law draft in the country’s legislation history.

One version of the draft was publicized in July 2005 for public review and drew over 11,000 comments and suggestions. The draft is now of its seventh version, and the public has yet to get a glance of the latest update, which triggered calls on the Internet for a public review.

A poster, with a byline of Zheng Xianli, wrote in an online forum that establishing the Property Law, which basically is about protecting ownership of properties, “is never just the business of a few law experts,” and called for the latest draft to be made pubic “as soon as possible.”

----by Josie Liu

http://news.sina.com.cn/c/2006-12-30/091410896897s.shtml
http://news.sina.com.cn/o/2006-12-30/073210895662s.shtml
http://news.sina.com.cn/o/2006-12-30/092010897517s.shtml
http://news.sina.com.cn/c/2007-01-08/212711982209.shtml
http://washeng.net/HuaShan/BBS/shishi/gbcurrent/152900.shtml

Related report:
China delays property law amid rights dispute
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/d1d8d4b2-af6a-11da-b417-0000779e2340.html

Shanghai: Another Hong Kong?

In a recent interview with Hong Kong media, an economics professor from Shanghai proposed the city to become a special administrative region like Hong Kong.

Zhang Jun, 43, professor from Fu Dan University, said he is concerned about Shanghai’s future, not sure whether the city can keep up economic development and expand its prosperity if it stayed with its current political and economic format.

Among many reasons for his concern is the fact that Shanghai’s development has to follow the guideline of the central government, which may eventually limit the city’s development capability, Prof. Zhang suggested.

“I believe that people all hope that Shanghais can have big influence in the economic development of the Asian Pacific region, becoming the center of trade, traffic and information, like Hong Kong and Singapore …But what we have to consider is, how far Shanghai can go in the process to reach such a goal?” he said.

Not far, according to him, if Shanghai remained “one member of [China’s]31 provinces.” He suggested that Shanghai needed more freedom in legislation and administration in order to gain faster and bigger progress.

In other words, to allow Shanghai to surpass the average pace of development of entire China, “[the city] needs to have a new relationship model with the central government,” Prof. Zhang told the journalist. The city is now a municipality, a city directly under China's central government. Normally in China, a city is under the administration of its home province. But Prof. Zhang hoped Shanghai to have more freedom and power than a municipality.

“It’s not impossible to discuss the change of the administrative division of Shanghai,” Prof. Zhang said. “Hong Kong can be a special administrative region. Is it possible to extend this concept, or put it to more application here in Shanghai? I think this is a possible idea in the future thinking about …Shanghai’s position.”

China’s economy growth has made it necessary to have more than one cities like Hong Kong, and Shanghai is one of the best candidates among mainland cities to become another Hong Kong, Prof. Zhang added, although whether or not Shanghai can, or should go that direction is not up to the city’s decision, but the whole development strategy of the central government. However, allowing Shanghai to go forward would benefit the country’s economy as a whole, because it would provide better service for other regions’ development, according to Prof. Zhang.

The proposal aroused much discussion from the public, by posting online comments. Some haled it as a good idea. Some refuted Prof. Zhang as speaking stunning ideas only to gain attention. And more people view the idea as unrealistic. "It’s a good suggestion, but for sure it won’t be carried out," on poster wrote. Still some mocked the idea as simply making Shanghai another Chinese city that will require a visa to get in, like the case in Hong Kong.

----by Josie Liu

http://finance.phoenixtv.com/news/domestic/200612/1230_193_57239.shtml
http://blog.phoenixtv.com/user2/jishuoming/archives/2007/571185.html
http://blog.sina.com.cn/u/4b261c30010007u0
http://www.prozhang.com/index.htm

City Residents Raising Money on Their Own to Build a Park

Residents in a meeting discussing their bid






The planned park





Concerned that an open space in their residential area in Guangzhou City will turn into more skyscrapers, some residents decided to build a public park on the spot by raising money on their own, an initiative pretty innovative for China's urban residents.

The park, in fact, was not a new idea. Six years ago, a planned park was included in the advertisement for the property and played as a major attraction to many home buyers. But the park never really came into being. For the past years, residents occasionally played soccer or flied kites on a piece of bare land, on which the park was said to be built, Guangzhou-based Information Times reported.

While looking forward to a nice park in an area surrounded by more and more new buildings, residents heard in 2002 that the government planned to use the vacant spot for commercial purposes. Residents were worried. “We are seeing closer and closer distance between buildings, and more and more traffic signals, but the government still wanted to change the planned park into more residences,” one of them said. Loathing the idea of living in another concrete forest, home owners decided to do something.

Learning from some government officials that the government had difficulty to fund the park, the residents volunteered to raise money by themselves. They are drafting a report to submit to Guangzhou municipal government, asking for permission to build a big city park, with fountains and recreational facilities, on the open space and they will pay for the construction expenses of about 30 million yuan (about $4 million).

Meetings have been held among interested home owners and the fund raising efforts so far have been promising. However, after all, these people do not own the land. The government does, instead, and it has the right to develop the land into whatever it likes.

Obviously, building hotels and business towers could bring much more income to the government than creating a park. To make things more difficult, the residents are trying to negotiate with the government to let them build the park at zero land cost. Unfortunately, a city government is not a charity, let alone the fact that the government could charge up to 250 million yuan for using the land. In addition, a real estate company is also eyeing on the piece of land, and it is willing to pay for the price of using it. Taking such big interests into account, an expert predicted little luck for the residents’ bid.

If the residents succeeded in the pursuit, they will set a glory example of urban Chinese residents’ grass-root fight for a better living environment. If they failed, well, it will just be another real estate project in an already over crowded metropolis, like what is happening almost everyday in China.

----by Josie Liu

http://news.sina.com.cn/c/p/2007-01-04/014611946658.shtml

New Year Brings New Laws to China

Pigeons set off at the Tiananmen Square on New Year’s Day

Starting January 1, 61 new laws and regulations, half state laws and half local, took effect throughout the country.

As the New Year began, the Supreme Court took into its hands the final approval of death penalties handed down by lower courts, in an effort to check on wrong cases and the abuse of law in local courts, the People’s Daily reported.

Another new legislation is called Anti Money Laundering Law, requiring in financial institutions the establishment of customer identity reorganization, transaction records and large-amount trade report systems, as well as other regulations to help discover and stop money laundering.

A new law strengthening the surveillance power of People’s Congress is also in place. It defines the supervision role of the standing committee of national and local People’s Congress as to be focused on the government, court and procuratorate. Among other tasks, the standing committee shall make sure it looks into government budget and its implementation.

Besides, according to the new Passport Law, starting 2007, it takes 15 days, down from 30 days, to get a Chinese passport. The government took steps to shorten the procedure mostly due to fast growing population traveling overseas. In 2006, nearly four million Chinese people traveled outside the country, while there were only 100,000 off-shore travelers every year in the early 1980s.

In addition, experts from overseas, either Chinese natives or not, will enjoy better treatment at Chinese custom as their luggage will not be routinely checked and some of their belongings will be waived from custom taxes.

----by Josie Liu

http://paper.people.com.cn/rmrbhwb/html/2007-01/01/content_12189440.htm