Contending conceptions of ownership in urbanizing China

From authoritarian development to totalist urban reordering: The Daxing forced evictions case

“…Evictee protest can be dismissed as 'selfish', even when it takes the form of suicide, as in the 2010 case of Tang Fuzhen. 15 The official perspective thus reduces conflicts arising in these contexts to conflicts of economic interest (利益), centred on land understood as a resource, even though cases such as that of Tang point to far more complex experiences of dispossession, dislocation, and non-material grievance. Since officials are authorized to make decisions about proper land use, the accuracy of the utilitarian calculus they apply can never be called into question; indeed, as has been widely documented, attempts to challenge government decisions in this context can lead to suppression and retaliation.…”

Resisting Dignity Takings in China

“…According to the law, compensation to evictees is basically calculated as lost putative agricultural output in rural and suburban areas; in urban areas, compensation is for the market value of the buildings taken from urban residents, but not the land on which these buildings stood. In neither case is compensation calculated on the basis of the market value that land will have once it becomes part of urban real estate; it will generally be a fraction of that value (Lei 2014; Pils 2014). However one views these rules, they can in many cases be flaunted with impunity, for systemic reasons.…”

“…Those who succeed in litigating at all generally find that the courts will at most address the issue of compensation and resettlement standards, but not the more fundamental issue of the legality of the taking. Moreover, procedural law renders court injunctions to halt demolition projects as rare exceptions in practice (although at least in urban cases, the law now provides for such injunctions), and demolitions may go forward even when litigation about the building in question is pending (Lei 2014; Pils 2014).…”

“…Why have dozens of Chinese evictees set fire to themselves, or jumped from the roofs of their homes, or otherwise tried to kill themselves, such as Ms. Tang Fuzhen, whose widely reported suicide in 2010 triggered a public debate about forced evictions and land grabs (Amnesty International 2012, 56; Pils 2014)? Why have others resorted to violence against eviction teams, and why have some of these been celebrated as heroes?…”

“… A significant number of urban homeowners were able to hold on to their properties, despite the introduction of compulsory lease schemes run by the government, right through the Mao Zedong era (Pils ).…”