Couple challenges Chinese property laws

By Richard McGregor

Published: March 26 2007 16:09 | Last updated: March 26 2007 16:09

Just weeks after China passed a pioneering property law, a couple’s fight for their house in Chongqing, in western China, is providing a headline-grabbing test of the government’s promise to protect private title rights.

Wu Ping and her husband have held out for nearly three years against developers that are trying to clear the area for a large commercial development. The frustrated developers, in turn, have simply dug round the Wus’ house, leaving it stranded like an ancient citadel in the centre of a 10-m-deep hole.

Ms Wu now uses pulleys to lift food and water into her house. Her husband, a kung fu master, has used his martial arts skills to fend off gangs sent by the developers to evict them.

But far from isolating Ms Wu, the developer’s actions have provided a platform for a campaign that has highlighted the anger across the country of people ejected from their homes to make way for the new building boom that has accompanied China’s recent breakneck economic growth

In the weeks since photos of the house were put on the internet, tens of thousands of users have posted messages backing Ms Wu. One user dubbed her property the “most powerful ‘nail house’ in the world’”, a reference to the Chinese phrase meaning an unyielding individual or group who resist the authorities.

The phrase has stuck, with Ms Wu’s house now referred to as just ‘the nail house’ in the local media.

Even the official China Daily has weighed in, saying the case reflects “the urgent need to set up a mechanism to impartially settle disputes over property rights”.

Ms Wu herself has proved to be a canny campaigner, speaking freely to the local press and wrapping her campaign in patriotism, by waving the national flag from her verandah for photo­graphers.

Reached on her mobile phone on Monday, Ms Wu said the house was her “private property”.

“The developers have gained support from the local government, but both have violated not only the property law but also the constitution,” she told the Financial Times. “If my case could not be properly solved, what is the sense of issuing a property law?”

Ms Wu’s complaint is the same as that of most ordinary Chinese who have been forced to abandon their family homes in the wave of urban renewal projects that have transformed Chinese cities over the past decade.

She says the developers and the local government have not provided her with compensation to match the market value of her property.

“My request, to relocate me into a house of the same size and similar location or compensate me at the market rate, is made according to Chinese law,” she said. “The developer simply wanted to knock down my property and pay as little as possible.”

Ms Wu has demanded Rmb140,000 ($17,950) per square metre, an amount that she says reflects the use of the site for commercial property once it is redeveloped.

It is a highly ambitious demand in the city where median-value houses sell for less than Rmb10,000 ($1,280) a square metre, but one that has thrilled her supporters, who would like to see her get rich at the expense of the developers.

The favourable media coverage of Ms Wu’s case has now ceased. Such was the groundswell of support on the internet that the propaganda department, which controls the media, late last week ordered all references to the case removed from the web.

But the case has been a reminder for the central government of the minefield surrounding property rights in China.

Even with the passage this month of the property law, Ms Wu’s case may reinforce the natural inclination of government officials to leave such decisions to their discretion, rather than any independent exercise of the law.

Additional reporting by Sun Yu in Beijing

Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2008