Private property

China's National People Congress is deliberating the Property Law to be voted on at its closing session on March 16. Private and public property will be equally protected by law, although according to China's constitution, public property still enjoys a higher status and role in China's economy.

Reporting on the new law in the international media has been ruefully inadequate. Some journalists say China will for the first time protect private property, which of course is nonsense. Private property has had some form of protection since 1988. Moreover it is wrong to talk about “private property” without any distinction. Even during the Cultural Revolution people had private property. The little Red Book of Mao's Quotations for example, or their Mao jackets. Some commentators are still distorting communism's view of private property. From a communist point of view, private property of the means of production is to be abolished, not private property of a book or a jacket. Although in the final communist society, everybody will be able to acquire anything he or she may need because of the extreme high level of production and therefore you could say private property will no longer exist, but that society is still a long way of.

Back to China. Opponents of the property law say it will facilitate the plundering of state property by bureaucrats and oligarchs, who will usurp it and turn it into their private property. Proponents say the law will protect the interests of ordinary people against expropriations without compensation, such as people who are driven out of their homes to make way for new real estate developments without receiving the necessary funds to buy a new apartment.

While how you look at the property law from an ideological point of view remains an interesting topic, how the law will be implemented by the courts will also be worth watching. How will the courts rule and will their rulings be enforceable? That remains a big question mark. Without implementation, the property law remains just a piece of recyclable paper.