China new property laws

After 30 years of economic reform and 14 years of debate, China's legislature passed a milestone property law Friday strengthening protection for private businesses and property.
The property law was passed with a vote of 2,799 delegates in favor, 52 opposed and 37 abstaining on the final day of the annual two-week session of the National People's Congress.
Passage by the National People's Congress (NPC) was certain because legislation doesn't come to a vote at the annual meeting of the NPC unless the Communist Party has approved it and assured its passage. Even so, the vote hasn't been without controversy.
Since the Communist revolution in 1949, China has permitted only public ownership. The party stripped landowners and others of private property, persecuting them and declaring all property collectively owned.
For some, the new law is a betrayal of communist China's founding principles.
The property law is belated recognition of the private sector's dominant role. Private-sector activity is about 65% of the economy, official statistics show.
Changes in the new law are mostly symbolic. Legally, all land remains state-owned, but private individuals and companies can obtain the right to use it for periods of up to 70 years and sell those rights.
Wen Tiejun, a leading government advisor on rural issues, says the new protections are unlikely to do much for farmers. Government officials have seized land from hundreds of thousands of rural Chinese for development, sometimes sparking protests or riots.
Leaders in Beijing got a timely reminder of tensions created by the yawning rich-poor divide. Up to 20,000 farmers clashed with police earlier this week in Hunan province, protesting a $1 increase in bus fares.
The two-week session of the National People's Congress remains a tightly scripted affair devoid of open debate. It is the world's largest legislature with nearly 3,000 delegates. In five decades, the NPC's ranks of people's deputies, selected for their loyalty, have not rejected a single bill that the Communist Party set before them.
Ordinary Chinese can vote for party-approved deputies at the local level, but upper echelons are hand-picked by party leaders.
The lack of direct representation is most glaring among the delegation representing Taiwan.
The island is considered by China to be a renegade province, but its leaders have rejected the mainland's demands for unification. None of the NPC's Taiwan delegates lives there.