China's domestic land grab

In China's Land Grabs Raise Specter of Popular Unrest, Edward Cody describes the struggle of peasants against officials who expropriate their land.

"The situation of peasants being deprived of their land is very serious in China," said Li Baiguang, director of the Beijing Qimin Research Center. Li, who has studied land seizures in Fujian and other rural provinces, added, "If the interests of the peasants cannot be properly protected and the conflicts cannot be settled, Chinese society might suffer from turbulence."

...a low-level Communist Party cadre caused a national sensation nearly two months ago by publishing an open letter accusing his superiors of blocking attempts to investigate similar land seizures in another suburb of Fuzhou. Within days, the letter was pulled from Web sites and the government-controlled press was ordered to stop reporting on it. The Fuzhou government said the official, Huang Jingao, had violated party rules. It ordered him to proceed with a self-examination of his errors, which a declaration said were caused by "individualism."

Individualism was a goal of the well-to-do professionals who, in the 1990s, built about 165 luxury houses on Xiao Guwei, an island in the Pearl River where it flows through booming Guangzhou 300 miles southwest of here. No two houses were the same, and most enjoyed serene views of the murky river that belied their nearness to the busy city center.

Cody earlier described Huang Jingao 黄金高's battle against corruption.