Chinese Government Struggles with Protests over Property Rights

There is growing social unrest in many parts of China, something highlighted by the government's recent deadly response to a protest over confiscation of land, a common trouble area. As the article notes, the protests are a sign that average citizens in China are increasingly aware of and willing to protect property and other rights. The Chinese government is looking for a way to respond effectively to the growing unrest and, encouragingly, there are some signs that violent responses by officials will be avoided:

As the economy booms, so does unrest, The Economist: It is hard to know what is most remarkable: the protest, the crackdown or the government response. A demonstration in a coastal settlement in a relatively rich province of southern China last week turned violent. Residents in Dongzhou took up spears, knives, pipe-bombs, petrol bombs and sticks of dynamite, first threatening to blow up a local power generation plant and then defying paramilitary police sent to impose order. The police, in gathering darkness and “in alarm”, responded by shooting dead at least three protesters and wounding several others. ... Reports gathered by journalists ... suggest that, in fact, many more were killed, perhaps 20 ... including bystanders. ...Amnesty International ... says this is the first time demonstrators in China have been killed by police fire since 1989 ... in Tiananmen Square...

Though protests are increasingly common in China, the violence in Dongzhou was uncommon. Rarer still was the reaction of the authorities. Rather than deny the police crackdown ... the government of Guangdong province at the weekend criticised the “wrong actions” of the commander... Civilian officials then detained him, an extraordinary response which suggests high-level concern that the incident was badly mishandled... There is every reason to expect more uprisings as China’s economy continues to boom. The farmers and fishermen who took part in the protest last week are not China’s poorest... Many of the homes in their settlement ... are modern and in good condition ... But locals are enraged that land was confiscated for use in a $700m development project to supply electricity to Shanwei, and little compensation was offered. This suggests ordinary Chinese are increasingly aware of their property rights and willing to defy authorities to protect them...

How China’s government handles such protests is now a burning question. ... Hardliners believe in tough measures, such as banning internet material that incites “illegal demonstrations” and deploying newly trained anti-riot and counter-terrorist units. These last two have been combined into a new “special police” force that is supposed to tackle any demonstration that turns “highly confrontational”. But if the ham-fisted performance at Dongzhou is a sign of it in action, there is reason to look for other responses. ... [W]here ... the root problem is access to land, officials could do more to respond to the grievances ... by ensuring that property rights are better respected. Tackling corruption would help too. Too often, compensation offered for confiscated land is pocketed by ... officials. ...

There are some signs that the government will not rely merely on repressive measures. The weekend arrest of the military officer responsible in Dongzhou was surprising and welcome. That suggests the highest authorities in the country ... who sits atop the China’s civilian, military and Communist party structures, have become involved and disapprove of the police violence. That journalists have been able to put together a picture of what happened in Dongzhou also reflects a limited freedom that did not exist a decade ago ... With many more protests to come, the calls for rights are sure to grow louder.

Signs that the government is striving to find less heavy-handed responses are encouraging.  Measures such as more generous compensation, reducing corruption, and so on may reduce the problem, but hard feelings over land confiscation will never be entirely avoided. One wonders how hard officials work to avoid confiscating land for public projects and perhaps this is another area it could improve. A government used to asserting its authority without regard to individual rights may not think to try to find solutions that avoid such conflicts when planning projects if it requires additional effort or cost. Recognition that the government must work to avoid conflicts where possible at the planning stage could also help.

Update: For more see Gino, The Useless Tree and The China Digital Times.

Comments

[anne]

China is 1.4 billion people living in a vast country administered not by a particular leader or central leadership but by a myriad of leaderships on local levels. The central leadership tries to set a tone, a direction for the country, but the central leadership does not directly administer policy that effects the vast Chinese population. The history of China is a history of a leadership more or less effectively seeking stability for a country that seems ever ready to fly apart. Transportation and communication have always been the mark of effective central administration, but have at times been of little effect. The leadership in the last 25 years has been remarkably effective, but think of a vast land of 1.4 billion people and understand how easily China can be taken as flying apart as administration differs so locality to locality.

[Mark Thoma]

Thanks anne. That's a helpful perspective on this.

[anne]

Individual versus small group versus collective rights conflicts in China present a constant tension, with collective rights being recognized and adhered to far more often though less often than a generation ago. There are any number of public demonstrations over community needs, for demonstrations are often the only recourse. But, demonstrations and responses are routinely controlled and in the attention they bring can be a source of social change.

[anne]

http://www.nytimes.com/books/98/11/15/reviews/981115.15greenbt.html

November 15, 1998

Orienteering
By STEPHEN GREENBLATT

THE CHAN'S GREAT CONTINENT
China in Western Minds.
By Jonathan D. Spence.

A young, impressionable Scottish woman, shortly after arriving in China in 1859, sends home an account of a boat trip she has taken on the Wusong River:

''On each side hung weeping willows, dropping their bending branches into the limpid stream. Back from the river were numerous fields waving with golden corn, and many a neat farmhouse peeped out amid a very luxuriance of trees. We were now nearing a beautifully arched bridge, green with flowering creepers. . . . On the top of a pretty green hill stood a time-worn pagoda, its numberless corners and juttings, edged with bronze and brass, catching a glow from the morning rays, and glittering in the fair sunlight.''

She is no doubt describing exactly what she saw, but she is also, of course, describing the wallpaper and porcelains and delicately figured boxes that had been the rage in Europe since the 18th century and have remained a staple of interior decoration ever since. When I was a child, I gazed at the same scenes on the walls of my parents' house in suburban Boston, and when I went to China in the 1980's, I reached for my camera to photograph certain landscapes because they looked, well, so much like China -- which is to say, so much like that wallpaper. No doubt I was careful to exclude from my snapshots whatever did not fit.

Jonathan D. Spence's wonderful new book, ''The Chan's Great Continent: China in Western Minds,'' is about the history of these ''sightings,'' as he calls them, the numerous glimpses of a country that has fascinated and on occasion obsessed Western observers since the publication of Marco Polo's ''Travels'' in the late 13th century....

Is there an overarching order to these multifarious perspectives? Spence thinks not, and consequently his book, loosely organized in chronological order, does not offer any theory of the West's long encounter with China or any general account of the structure of its representations. The very term ''sighting,'' drawn from navigation and exploration, connotes something fleeting, intermittent and partial, sufficient perhaps to get one's bearings or even, in gunnery, to get off an accurate shot, but not nearly enough to take in the whole. An extreme example, too phantasmic to merit more than a brief mention, is Columbus's glimpse in 1492 of what he thought was China.

But Columbus was carrying with him an immensely influential account of China that Spence does discuss at some length, that of the Venetian Marco Polo....

[ilsm]

The idea of the individual appears to me to be very strong in Chinese culture. The Tao, Confusius, Zen etc. are more inward looking than outward.

Is there a sociology?

[anne]

Interesting comment. What then is individuality in China, in Chinese history? I must think. Think however of a traditional Chinese silk screen with a rocky foreground descending to a valley with small quiet figures and off in the distance partly cloud covered mountains. As though the figures are lost or to be lost in the landscape. A stereotypical traditional Chinese or Buddhist image :) Interesting. Notice that Chinese landscape artists used clouds in the middle ground to suggest distance where western artists used foreshortening.

[anne]

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/11/07/arts/design/07clou.html?ex=1289019600&en=53b6bc59ba9cdc76&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss

November 7, 2005

Native Eyes on a Land South of the Clouds
By ERIK ECKHOLM

He was herding goats high up the creases of sacred Mount Kawagebo when the morning light seemed right, recalled Ananzhu, an ethnic Tibetan from an isolated village of southern China. So he took out his camera. The scene he captured that day, of an emerald lake beneath two conical, ice-capped peaks, was both stunning and layered with meanings.

Ananzhu (he has only one name) was carrying a camera provided by the United States-based Nature Conservancy as part of a Photovoice project.

More than 250 people from 60 villages in northern Yunnan province, all from ethnic minorities, have been given a way to document, through their own eyes, their cultures and surroundings.

His alpine scene is one of some 45 photographs from the project now on display at the American Museum of Natural History in "Voices From South of the Clouds" (a reference to Yunnan, Chinese for "south of the clouds"). The exhibition is in the small Akeley gallery, behind the African mammals, and runs until March 12.

Ananzhu was one of three village photographers the conservancy brought to New York last week for a cultural celebration. The pictures provide a record of endangered traditions and landscapes but the main goal, said Ann McBride Norton, a conservancy adviser in Asia who organized the project, is to give a voice to northern Yunnan's diverse peoples.

The region's myriad ethnic groups - including many people who are illiterate and do not even speak Chinese - are facing surges in tourism, road-building and investment. The conservancy is working with local officials to promote environmentally benign development, an idea with shallow roots in economically booming China.

With some of the last unspoiled remnants in all of China, Yunnan is not only ethnically but also biologically rich, a "hot spot" for plant species including 162 species of rhododendron that sprinkle the hillsides with pink flowers each spring....