generalspeaking

Shuguang West Road, China

This is rather puzzling. China, forever portrayed as authoritarian, manipulative of its people edging toward totalitarianism, is placed in a peculiar light with the situation recently reported on whereby a stubborn pair of siblings has held up the modernization of part of Beijing, occasioning by their refusal to sell their inner-city plot of land, great inconvenience to the municipality, its other residents, and entailing in the process additional costs as well.

The property where the Zhang family lives was once a rural area outside Beijing. The property the two brothers own on Shuguang West Road has been enveloped by massive development as the city has grown monumentally over the years to accommodate its growing population. Massive high-rise development has proceeded apace, with the brothers' property a small, shabby oasis of reluctance in the middle of these newly developed areas.

The property appears as traditionally rural Chinese; a ramshackle house and outbuildings comprised of cinder blocks and wood, with plastic tarps on the roof, bare concrete floors, walls covered with plastic sheeting, and even newspaper. The economic boom and mass movement of people from the countryside to employment in the city has altered the terrain far beyond its original ownership.

The brothers Zhang no longer live in a rural village, where a family farm traditionally supported a large family and people knew one another intimately. All of the Zhangs' neighbours have moved away, as their properties were bought out by developers. But the Zhangs' walled courtyard and small buildings remain, isolated and out of place within a landscape of skyscrapers.

Despite the inconvenience to development that the awkward presence of the compound represents, the Zhangs remain, unmolested by authority. The property interrupts six lanes of road, squeezing traffic to bottlenecks, resulting in massive traffic jams. There are eight lanes of traffic on one side of the Zhang family compound, and six on the other, all of which curve around the courtyard walls.

Clearly, this is a holding situation for both the elderly Zhangs and the municipal authority in the capital city of China. Now, is this not peculiar, that the state would not casually undertake to use its authority to requisition the property and pay the owners the assessed value, and put the matter to rest?

Labels: China, Particularities/Peculiarities

posted by Pieface @ Thursday, July 29, 2010