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China Property Reform

Dave | 29.12.2003 13:45

Freedom to own property comes to China.

China's plan to constitutionally guarantee the right to hold private property for the first time since the 1949 communist revolution is a step closer to taking effect after parliamentary leaders approved the measure.

Leaders of the National People's Congress approved a proposed constitutional amendment over the weekend and scheduled a vote in March by the full legislature.

The measure, which says "private property obtained legally shall not be violated," appears certain to win approval. It already has been endorsed by the ruling Communist Party as essential in pushing forward China's economic reforms.

It was approved during the weekend by the NPC Standing Committee, a body headed by the party's No. 2 leader, Wu Bangguo. The comittee handles lawmaking work when the full NPC, which meets only two weeks a year, is out of session.

Chinese law already recognizes private property, but entrepreneurs who are driving the country's economic development lobbied for a constitutional guarantee.

The amendment is expected to lead to legal changes improving the country's legal framework for trading real estate, stocks and bonds and other property.

It also could help entrepreneurs get access to financing by giving them legal status that could encourage state banks, which lend mostly to government companies, to do more business with them.

Dave

Comments

Hide the following 4 comments

Interesting, but lazy

29.12.2003 14:40

More news plagiarised without a reference from corporate news sources

 http://www.ajc.com/news/content/news/1203/29china.html

Crash

But the point is . . . !

29.12.2003 14:56

you're right I did fail to credit the news agency concerned (it was AP) but the point of the posting was the historic change in China's legislation. I didn't expect this story to be picked up by the main stream media but I did think it worthy of comment on IM. Here we have a country which is slowly emerging to be, in a few years, the next capitalist superpower while still maintaining its "front" as a comm / socialist nation. If anybody could have made socialism work it was China and even they have failed.

What do you think ??

Dave

China - hydrid capitalist/socialist economy

30.12.2003 13:01

This drives a massive hole through the philosophical argument of anti-capitalism - namely that no alternative system can really work without the fundamental necessity of private property ownership. China does now hide behind the veneer of being a socialist state to some degree - there is no welfare system yet (for the vastness of it's population, this has been unaffordable up until now, but maybe be in time). However, it is bringing many old industries into co-operative ownership. What we see, then, is a state-regulated model of state governance, guiding the community ownership of business enterprise, and combining this with centralised control and the contracting-out of key segments of the economy to the free market. china has become a hybrid Socialist/free-market economy.

It is pathetic to argue whether something is capitalist or not capitalist, unless we are comparing an indigenous culture with civil society. Capitalism is the nature of the environment we live in - analogous to environmental conditions such as the basic requirements that humans depend upon for survival like oxygen, water, etc. Civil society may be an alien life-force to the indigenous cultures living on earth, so while it is here, we have to accept the fundamental processes that require it to continue to survive - capitalism is that which it requires.

disclaimer

The Future

30.12.2003 13:47

It will be difficult for China to continue to play the "Socialism" card for much longer as its population sees the rise of a Western Capitalist free market system take over from the existing state control. It will be interesting to see if the central government can continue to maintain control of the army without the extras it has been able to offer in the past.

As we saw in post-Soviet Russia once the material benefits of armed serivce membership within a Socialist state go away control falls.

I am surprised to see the fall of Socialism so quickly in China, I was sure it would ultimately fail as education created a Chinese middle class but I expected it to take longer.

With only North Korea continuing to pursue (in least in theory) a fully Socialist society will I see the worldwide failure of Socialism in my lifetime ?

Dave