Chinese Lose Homes, Farms in New Land Grab

For Tang Yulan and his neighbors, China’s communist revolution seems to be moving in reverse.

“That once was a very nice house; now look at it,” said Tang, a farmer until most of his village of Hongqiao, a suburb of the lakeside eastern Chinese city of Wuxi, was reduced to rubble to make way for urban sprawl.

“This land was inherited from our ancestors, generation after generation,” said Tang, a robust, soft-spoken 68-year-old. “But they just auctioned it off without even notifying us. The local government isn’t obeying the laws or national policy.”

The communist leadership that decades ago dispossessed landlords and gave their acreage to farmers is now championing capitalist-style reforms that are taking the land away, field by field, house by house. Cities raze old neighborhoods and annex villages to build factories, golf courses and upscale apartment compounds .

The politically volatile issue will be the backdrop, if not the agenda, for China’s annual legislative session, which begins this weekend in Beijing.

Disputes over land and irrigation water have already led to violent clashes, threatening the Communist Party’s claim as the guarantor of social stability, and worsening the gap between rich cities and a vast, impoverished countryside that is home to two-thirds of China’s population.

“The land-use issue is the fundamental cause for large-scale social and political troubles in China,” said Ding Xueliang, a China expert at Hong Kong’s University of Science and Technology. “In this area, top leaders have a lot to worry about.”

The leaders seem aware of it.

The party last year ordered a freeze on conversion of farmland to industrial use, alarmed by falling grain production and simmering anger in the countryside. Thousands of projects were halted for investigation.

Farm taxes have been abolished and subsidies raised. Those changes, and favorable weather, boosted grain production to 470 million tons last year, up from 430 million tons in 2003.

But demolition of villages continues, especially on city outskirts, as local governments compete for investment. On the Internet, the Wuxi government has listed dozens of proposed projects seeking hundreds of millions of dollars.

The city of 4.4 million people was once best known for its silk and scenic views of Taihu, a misty lake ringed by fish ponds and rice paddies. Today, it’s a manufacturing center packed with shopping malls, high-rise apartment buildings and sprawling industrial parks -- most still under construction.

After the 1949 revolution, land was redistributed to farmers who were given usage rights but not ownership. About four in 10 Chinese farmers have contracts, signed in the last decade or so, granting them rights to their land for 30 years.

But such documents count for little in disputes with powerful local officials -- the same people in charge of enforcing the law -- who often sell the rights to use the land to real estate developers.

The changes in Tang’s village date back to the 1980s when authorities began gradually seizing the farmland. The demolition of homes began last year. Most of the 1,000 villagers were given alternative housing; only Tang and a handful of neighbors remain here, their homes still intact.

Tang and the neighbors claim that they were never consulted about the loss of their fields and homes, and haven’t been paid any of the legally required compensation.

No longer able to farm, they say they get by on a monthly old-age subsidy of about $38. Their children have gone to work in nearby factories or sought jobs in other parts of the country.

“They say the redevelopment of the land will create wealth, but we’re just getting poorer,” said Yan Yongfa, barely able to contain his anger. “Life is tough for us ordinary folk.”

Last summer, the villagers went to Beijing seeking a government investigation but were refused. So they have gone to court.

An official of the Li Yuan Development Zone that swallowed Hongqiao said the city government had no obligation to seek the villagers’ prior agreement.

Refusing to give her name, she said notices of government decisions were usually posted on village notice boards. Most people were willing to negotiate, and no one was forced out, she said.

Sitting around a heavy dining table in the front room of one of the few homes remaining, Tang’s neighbors pulled out documents showing their right to live in the village “in perpetuity,” and pamphlets outlining government policies.

The villagers know that it’s too late to get their land back. “Listen, the country is developing, and living standards have been improving,” Tang said. “I’m not opposed to change.

“But I do object to having my house and livelihood destroyed. They’re leaving us with nothing. In the end, we’ll be poorer than we were before.”