China's top legislator yesterday urged passage of a milestone law to protect private property, saying it was in tune with changes to Chinese Communist Party policy and China's evolving economic and social conditions.
The much-revised Law on Property Rights has taken 14 years to arrive before the National People's Congress (NPC) but was now "basically mature," Wu Bangguo (
"The Law on Property Rights is a basic law for standardizing property relationships, and has a supporting role in the socialist legal system with Chinese characteristics," Wu said.
The 40-page law with 247 articles is certain to pass the Communist Party-dominated congress when its annual session ends on Friday.
However, members of the nearly 3,000-member congress have in past registered their displeasure with the government's work, with up to 20 percent voting no.
A relatively low "yes" vote for the law could introduce additional difficulties into what is already expected to be a difficult enforcement process.
The law is the most explicit attempt yet to legally protect personal wealth within China's communist system, where poorly defined property rights have been exploited by the rich and influential.
Local officials have seized businesses, houses and farmland for lucrative real-estate and commercial deals, often with little or no compensation, sparking sometimes violent public protests and stunting the growth of private enterprise.
Wu said changes had been made to "reflect the basic socialist economic system as fully and accurately as possible."
Additional measures were also introduced to better improve protection for state-owned assets to prevent their further erosion, a nod to concerns that the law will accelerate a process of shifting state companies into the hands of their managers or local officials, often through sweetheart deals that ensure few protections for their workers.
The revisions also sought to safeguard the rights of rural residents and standardize routine practices, he said.
Meanwhile, an NPC member has demanded the immediate closure of a Starbucks coffee shop set up inside Beijing's Forbidden City, the Xinhua news agency reported yesterday.
Two months after a TV host launched an online campaign to evict the US coffee chain from the former home of Chinese emperors, the seven-year-old cafe has had its logo removed but otherwise it's business as usual, the agency said.
"Starbucks must move out of the imperial palace immediately, and it can no longer be allowed to taint China's national culture," said Jiang Hongbin (
CONFRONTATION: The water cannon attack was the second this month on the Philippine supply boat ‘Unaizah May 4,’ after an incident on March 5 The China Coast Guard yesterday morning blocked a Philippine supply vessel and damaged it with water cannons near a reef off the Southeast Asian country, the Philippines said. The Philippine military released video of what it said was a nearly hour-long attack off the Second Thomas Shoal (Renai Shoal, 仁愛暗沙) in the contested South China Sea, where Chinese ships have unleashed water cannons and collided with Philippine vessels in similar standoffs in the past few months. The China Coast Guard and other vessels “once again harassed, blocked, deployed water cannons, and executed dangerous maneuvers” against a routine rotation and resupply mission to
GLOBAL COMBAT AIR PROGRAM: The potential purchasers would be limited to the 15 nations with which Tokyo has signed defense partnership and equipment transfer deals Japan’s Cabinet yesterday approved a plan to sell future next-generation fighter jets that it is developing with the UK and Italy to other nations, in the latest move away from the country’s post-World War II pacifist principles. The contentious decision to allow international arms sales is expected to help secure Japan’s role in the joint fighter jet project, and is part of a move to build up the Japanese arms industry and bolster its role in global security. The Cabinet also endorsed a revision to Japan’s arms equipment and technology transfer guidelines to allow coproduced lethal weapons to be sold to nations
Thousands of devotees, some in a state of trance, gathered at a Buddhist temple on the outskirts of Bangkok renowned for sacred tattoos known as Sak Yant, paying their respects to a revered monk who mastered the practice and seeking purification. The gathering at Wat Bang Phra Buddhist temple is part of a Thai Wai Khru ritual in which devotees pay homage to Luang Phor Pern, the temple’s formal abbot, who died in 2002. He had a reputation for refining and popularizing the temple’s Sak Yant tattoo style. The idea that tattoos confer magical powers has existed in many parts of Asia
ON ALERT: A Russian cruise missile crossed into Polish airspace for about 40 seconds, the Polish military said, adding that it is constantly monitoring the war to protect its airspace Ukraine’s capital, Kyiv, and the western region of Lviv early yesterday came under a “massive” Russian air attack, officials said, while a Russian cruise missile breached Polish airspace, the Polish military said. Russia and Ukraine have been engaged in a series of deadly aerial attacks, with yesterday’s strikes coming a day after the Russian military said it had seized the Ukrainian village of Ivanivske, west of Bakhmut. A militant attack on a Moscow concert hall on Friday that killed at least 133 people also became a new flash point between the two archrivals. “Explosions in the capital. Air defense is working. Do not