Property rights in China

This train is a symbol of China’s economic growth which allows one to travel its 18 minute route in just a few minutes. Home owners along the path of the train are resisting more development of the train. One owner is this man, a software developer. His home is a few hundred yards from the proposed new route of the train. He recounts how he protested the expansion of the train with other home owners. He prefers to call what they were doing strolling rather than demonstrating, but he found it exhilarating. He says the fact that he owns rather than rents his home makes him feel more invested. This analyst says that’s what home owning does, and makes one feel more invested in society. He supports also giving farmers property rights. Unfortunately, they can’t do any of these things in China and in practice that’s meant a small elite connected to the government has made a fortune off the land while millions of farmers and poor urban dwellers get kicked off of property with little or not compensation. But increasingly, farmers in China are pushing back. these women are complaining about the farmland that was taken away from them and then went to the government. Her idea, that �our land is ours� became the theme of a petition that thousands of Chinese farmers signed late last year. The organizers of this movement were put under house arrest. But this Chinese lawyer sees these movements as a sign of change in how the Chinese relate to their government. That’s something more and more Chinese are insisting on.