Word: lande
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...China's farmers can work their land through 30-year, renewable leases, but they cannot buy or sell it (all land belongs to the state). Regulations do exist governing expropriation, but they are often not followed. Many farmers are increasingly angry with this - particularly when they believe that the land their families have tilled, often for generations, has been taken away without regard for the law. The declaration by the Zhuhai villagers is the latest in a series of such actions that now involve tens of thousands of farmers all over China. While it is too early to describe this...
...Jianrong, a director of the Institute of Rural Development at Beijing's most prestigious think tank, the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, or CASS, acknowledges that the recent assertions of rights over land by peasants are potentially transformational. "They're not widespread now but they could become symbolic ... of peasants ceasing to depend on the law and instead depending on 'natural law.'" Journalist and author Chen Guidi is more blunt: "If word of these declarations starts to spread to peasants around the countryside, it could become uncontrollable." Chen, with his wife Wu Chuntao, is the author of Will the Boat...
...Communist Party is aware of the farmers' anger but seems limited in what it can do. Yu of CASS notes that although there is "widespread recognition in both political and academic circles that the existing rural land system faces extremely grave problems, an extremely large gap also exists over the nature of the problem and how to solve it." Given that the party rose to power as an agrarian movement, conservative forces are blocking attempts to grant private ownership of farmland, which they believe would destroy one of the party's most fundamental socialist tenets. The answer...
...issued lots of good policies," Chen says, "but the local governments need help to implement them." That's why he and others such as the rural activist (who asked not to be identified for his protection) say that only by granting full rights to peasants to buy and sell land will these problems be solved from the grass roots up. "I believe if the farmers are given land and freedom to migrate, the change in China would be unrecognizable. A small number of farmers would sell their land once they own it, but the majority of farmers would use their...
...their stories. Some tell of being beaten. One man recounts how he was detained four times - once for 15 days - in a vain attempt to get him to sign a document giving approval for the demolition. They are afraid but also determined to continue fighting until they win their land back. "All we want is the land we have farmed for hundreds of years," says He Fuwei, one of two brothers who signed the original declaration...