Chinese Law and Politics Blog

Central Committee Issues Full Text of Decision on Rural Reform

On October 19, Chinese authorities released the full text of the Communist Party Central Committee's decision on rural reform.  The decision calls for expanding the ability of Chinese farmers to transfer, lease, rent, or exchange their land-use rights, consistent with the predictions of earlier news reports. 

The Decision Regarding Several Important Issues in Promoting Rural Reform sets out a broad set of goals for Party and government officials regarding rural reform.  In addition to calling for liberalizing the market in land-use rights, other goals include:

• Strengthening Party leadership over rural work.  The decision emphasizes that local Party committees are to continue play the core role in guiding rural affairs.

• Addressing the rural-urban divide.  The decision calls on officials to progressively work toward ensuring that migrant workers enjoy the same rights to education, health services, and other public services that established urban residents do.

• Improving rural governance.  The decision calls on officials to steadily work to ensure equal per-person representation between rural and urban districts in local legislatures.

• Expanding rural health care.
  

Chinese Authorities Release 2007 Action Plan on Intellectual Property Protection

Member agencies of the Chinese national working group on intellectual property (IP) protection released their 2007 Action Plan on April 23, according to a Xinhua news release of the same date.  The full text of the plan in English is available on the Xinhua website, while a full text version of the plan in Chinese is available on the People's Daily website.

The plan proposes a number of steps aimed at improving intellectual property protection in China, including enforcement campaigns, legislative reform, popular education activities, and increased international exchanges.

Text of Chinese Property Law Released

On March 16, the Chinese National People's Congress passed the P.R.C. Property Law.  The full text of the law is available on the P.R.C. government website, and commentary and analysis is available from Xinhua.

The above Xinhua link has gone dead (as of April 1), but it and the pages to which it refers are still available through the Google cache.

An English translation of the Property Law is available from Lehman, Lee, and Xu.

Chinese Property Law Moves Towards Consideration by National Legislature

China's draft Property Law is moving towards consideration and adoption by the National's People's Congress (NPC) at the legislative session which begins on March 5, 2007, according to a January 20 Xinhua article.  The draft law has gone through an unprecedented seven readings by the NPC since first being introduced in 2002.   For a timeline of the bill, provided by the official Chinese Xinhua news agency, see here.

The draft Property law has stirred significant opposition among both Chinese politicians and academics concerned about the ideological implications of legal protections for private property.  In 2006, NPC consideration of the draft law was delayed after a Beijing law professor attacked the bill in a open letter published on the Internet, as noted in a March 10, 2006 Financial Times article.  His assertion that the bill failed to protect state property and undermined the socialist system gathered (or reflected) sufficient attention from central authorities to delay it's consideration until this year.

Subsequent amendments to the draft law made in 2006 appear aimed at responding to some of these concerns, adding clauses providing for the equal protection of state and private property.