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 (
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