Rebellion of the Displaced

It was more than 60 years ago that Shen Ting’s mother’s mother put down 10 pieces of gold for the right to rent a one-room apartment in the Jingan district of downtown Shanghai. The gray-brick building in the old British settlement is now drab and, as always, cramped; the cooking is done in a public hallway, and bathrooms are shared too.

Through all that time, though, even after the government took it over following the Communist revolution in 1949, it has remained home for the Shen family -- until earlier this year, when security guards hired by a local developer showed up and said it was time to go.

The relocation of the Shens and more than 2,000 other area residents is not unusual in a city that is one of the world’s busiest construction sites, where skyscrapers seem to rise almost overnight and new apartments are in high demand by a burgeoning middle class. But the response of the Shens and several other tenants in the dilapidated Jingan complex is extremely unusual: They are fighting back.

The residents have launched a vigorous public protest and lawsuit that has attracted considerable attention here, in no small measure because the would-be developer of the site is at the center of a real estate fraud scandal that is being investigated by Beijing authorities and could yet ensnare other developers and even government officials here.

The high-flying developer, Zhou Zhengyi, one of Shanghai’s wealthiest men, was placed under house arrest on charges of misrepresenting his assets to secure hundreds of millions of dollars in bank loans. The head of the Shanghai branch of the Bank of China was soon demoted, with one bank official saying the action was linked to questionable loans to private developers.

Whether the scandal will mushroom is unclear, but it has bolstered the hopes of the plaintiffs in their battle, even though a judge in the case has largely ruled against them so far. The case is currently on appeal in the Shanghai courts. That state-run news media have covered the case in some detail has also unleashed considerable speculation that authorities, aware of widespread resentment among many poorer Shanghainese over how the city’s make-over is affecting them, are at least allowing a little venting over the subject.

The city government seemed to further acknowledge the anger in July when it announced plans to crack down on what it called the “wrongdoing” of some developers who had failed to give adequate replacement housing or compensation to the dislocated. And earlier this year, responding to a related source of grumbling, the state Ministry of Land and Resources announced a freeze on the lease of land in Shanghai for the development of more villa-style mansions, which a top ministry official called “luxury housing that is far above the average living standard.”

Advocates for the tenants see the moves as promising, and openly hope that the developers may be forced to award damages to the tenants and even provide them apartments in the new buildings that are being erected.

Liu Qing, president of Human Rights in China, a New York- and Hong Kong-based nonprofit group, said the case represents “an important test of whether China’s legal system can genuinely protect the interests of displaced residents over and against those of the rich and powerful.”

On the other hand, there is considerable evidence to suggest that the protests may only go so far -- not all the way to victory. The dislocated residents have hardly had a friendly hearing in court so far, and several protesters say they have been detained, hassled or put under surveillance by the police. One of their lawyers was arrested in June and charged with stealing state secrets, an allegation his supporters contend is bogus.

In any event, such protests are virtually unheard of in a place where even many of the displaced say the destruction of their residences is a necessary cost for helping Shanghai, once widely known as the Paris of the East, reclaim its place as one of the world’s most dynamic cities.

Indeed, many of the plaintiffs and others who have taken part in increasingly public protests over their forced relocation say their real goal is not so much to preserve the old housing. Few wax nostalgic about the confined, dingy tenements where they live now, and a common goal of most protesters is to secure an affordable apartment in one of the new high-rises planned for the spot where they were living.

“We support the government’s decision to do what it takes to make Shanghai an international, modern city,” said Xu Zhengqing, a 41-year-old restaurant owner, who was moved out of a three-room apartment downtown that he had been sharing with his wife and 11-year-old daughter, as well as his father, mother and a younger brother.

“But we just want fair compensation if we’re moved aside,” continued Xu, who said the developer offered them a new site in Shanghai’s suburbs that would cost about $112 a month, or about 10 times what they had been paying the government for their apartment. “There has to be a just resolution for all of us.”

The government’s policy is to encourage private local and foreign investment in new residential projects, often by giving away the land where the older housing now stands for little or no money, as long as the developers agree to provide new housing for those displaced.

In theory, that new housing will be of better quality than what they lived in before. But residents of the older buildings say that it is often not working out that way -- or, even if it is better or bigger, that it is often too far away from their old neighborhoods and jobs.

Remaining in or near their old neighborhood is an almost universal objective, and some tenants turn down the new apartments altogether, often settling for cash payments that are nowhere near enough to rent a decent place. They then join the increasingly frenzied scramble for any sort of remaining affordable accommodation near their work and their previous homes.

“You feel very intimate about where you’ve lived -- of course you want to stay nearby,” said Ouyang Ning, 47, who is facing relocation. “You have a deep affection for the place. It is a very human feeling.”

But generally, to get any kind of a decent apartment out of the process, people must move to Shanghai’s outskirts.

In many ways, Shanghai is simply introducing Western-style market forces into a housing system that for decades had been almost completely run by the government.

Proponents say it is the best and fastest way for the city to improve its overall housing supply and the infrastructure to go along with it, since the new high-rises bring in much more money -- and government revenue -- per square foot than the one-, two- and three-story traditional apartment blocks they are typically replacing.

But that policy is also exacerbating the gap between the rich and the poor here, and causing the sort of resentment that has boiled over into public protest.

Zhu Donghui, 38, was farming soybeans and cucumbers on a small plot of land about 10 miles outside of downtown when a developer showed up early last year and said the land was being turned over for a new apartment building. Zhu showed him and the local police the permit he had to farm on the site, but that did not seem to matter to anyone.

Within months, the six-story building was up.

“I lost my livelihood, and there’s no way I can afford to live in that building,” said Zhu, who is now living with relatives and, somewhat to his surprise because he had never demonstrated against anything before, finds himself joining the protests against relocation policies. He gets about $40 a month from the government, but that is hardly enough to cover living expenses for him, his wife and 10-year-old daughter.

“I feel left behind,” Zhu said. “Everything is growing around me, and I’m just idle.”

Li Wei, a spokesman for the Shanghai city government, said that in recent years, about 850,000 households have been moved in the city due to redevelopment, but he said only a fraction of the people in them had publicly complained about it.

“For these people, we try our very best to satisfy them,” Li said. “We have accepted their petitions and urged them to try to find a solution with the district government. This sort of discontent is a normal thing. And this time, mainly due to Zhou Zheng- yi’s case, some people are trying to take advantage of that case to advertise their dissatisfaction.”

But the protesters see it very differently. Shen Ting, whose family had had the apartment in the old British settlement before the Communist takeover, said the lawsuit involves much more than a dispute over money or alternative housing.

“I think it’s very inhumane the way my parents have been treated,” said Shen, who is 37 and runs a clothing business in Hong Kong. She was referring to her father, Shen Junsheng, 68 -- and especially, she said, to her mother, Mo Zhujie, 64, who grew up in the Jingan apartment.

“This is truly her home,” Shen said. “It has such a history in our family. It’s our heritage.”

She said her parents had been suffering psychologically since being removed from the property, which has yet to be demolished, as the investigation of Zhou is pending.

However, the city’s Land and Administrative Bureau, which recently announced that its goal was to have all dilapidated housing in Jingan torn down by 2006, said the property could be turned over to another developer.

Shen is one of six plaintiffs in the case against Zhou, representing about 2,150 tenants in the old complex due to be torn down. Many have protested outside Shanghai government offices or traveled to Beijing to press their case, and they eagerly offer documents, photographs and news clippings to anyone who will listen.

City officials say the protesters are not typical. “Of course it is expected that there will be some difficulties because of relocation,” Jiao Yang, a government spokesman, said at a briefing here a few weeks ago. “But most families support what’s going on because they know this is for the greater good of the city.”

Protesters say the percentages of people who complain about being relocated are relatively small for a reason.

“In China, the majority of people have a pretty low level of education, so they have little awareness of how to protest, how to express what they’re really feeling,” said one of the displaced residents, Zhang Yan, 41, a hospital manager. “I have the capability to express myself, and so that’s what I’m doing.”