John Pomfret's Chinese Fight A New Kind Of Land War: Many Citizens Battling Tide of Development

limited property rights have become a flash point at which people are confronting authorities, as well as a platform for unprecedented civic activism. Citizens groups are accusing local governments and government-backed developers of expropriating farmland to enrich themselves, failing to offer a fair market price for buildings and homes they condemn and routinely violating contracts on the size and quality of new apartments....

The political stakes are high as well. In the cities, a generation of grass-roots leaders is emerging from newly formed associations of middle-class apartment owners to fight the often corrupt entanglements of developers and local Communist Party functionaries. In recent elections in the southern city of Shenzhen, 10 candidates running for positions in the local People's Congress came from apartment-owner associations. The Communist Party was so threatened that it ensured that only one of them -- a loyal Communist Party member -- won, according to sources in that city's bureaucracy....

Zheng Enchong, a lawyer who has helped people in the burgeoning metropolis of Shanghai bring more than 500 cases against developers, was tried last month on charges of revealing state secrets in what other lawyers have said was a move by the government to stop lawyers from taking such cases. He has yet to be sentenced.

Zheng was arrested because he told his clients that Shanghai's wealthiest man, Zhou Zhengyi, obtained a 360,000-square-foot swath of land in the city's center for free by bribing senior party officials.

Ranked as one of China's richest men by Forbes, Zhou apparently will receive a slap on the wrist for the deal. He was arrested last week but charged with minor violations, including falsifying reports on registered capital and manipulating securities prices, according to Chinese news reports.

Widespread corruption is the main factor fueling the real estate war in China. Local government officials, factory bosses and other Chinese in positions of power sell the rights to use chunks of land to developers for a low price plus a hefty kickback. They then collude with gangs to oust villagers or urban residents of the area. The compensation paid to those residents, if any, is often a fraction of what the property is really worth....

When a development is built, corruption kicks in again.