China will demolish far fewer buildings this year to reduce widespread and sometimes violent protests by occupants that the government sees as destabilizing.
The clampdown on destruction of old buildings would also help check overinvestment in new construction, a key cause of economic overheating that the government is trying to cool, the State Council said in a statement on the Construction Ministry's Web site.
"[The government] should strictly control the area of demolition and relocation and ensure that the total area demolished nationwide this year is distinctly less than that of last year," it said.
PHOTO: AP
It did not say how many buildings were destroyed last year. Nor did it give explicit conditions under which demolition and relocation could occur, other than saying they must conform with overall city planning.
Social unrest, fueled mostly by economic disparities and an unreliable legal system, is becoming increasingly common.
Last year, more than 3 million people participated in about 58,000 incidents of social unrest, according to Outlook magazine, a weekly mouthpiece of the Chinese Communist Party. The number of protests grew by 15 percent from the previous year.
In Beijing, entire blocks of old alleyways, or hutong (
And in Shanghai, the transfer to a developer of a plot of land known as the "eight big tracts" triggered demonstrations by evicted families who had lived there for decades, many in traditional brick homes known as shikumen (
The Cabinet also banned the common practice of forcibly evicting residents by cutting off water, electricity or heating.
State media would be given more leeway to report on illegal demolitions but were told not to aggravate tension between residents and demolition teams.
The government has moved to curb bank loans to hot sectors such as property development, real estate, steel and cement, highlighting fears that loans to such projects could turn sour if China's economic boom turns to bust.
In one example, the Bank of China, gearing up to reform ahead of a stock listing, was reviewing risk controls after lending to an iron firm was halted in Beijing's clampdown on rampant investment projects.
China punished a number of officials last month for letting Jiangsu Tieben Iron Co illegally obtain land and secure a 4.3 billion yuan (US$520 million) credit line from a Bank of China branch to build a new plant.
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