China's New Outlook On Private Property

According to this March 9, 2007 article in the Washington Post, China is considering abandoning the notion that all property should be owned by the government:

China's legislature began examining a much-debated measure Thursday [March 8] that is intended to help protect private property in an increasingly well-off society.

Although the Communist Party still believes the state owns all land, the growing economy has meant that private property "has been increasing with each passing day," the draft legislation states, adding that the protection of that property is the "urgent demand of the people."

The latest draft of the property law, almost certain to pass, seeks to strike a delicate balance between the need to continue greasing the wheels of the Chinese economy -- which depends on private investment -- and satisfying old-guard officials reluctant to jettison the socialist ideals they have relied on since the 1949 communist revolution.

"As the reform and opening-up and the economy develop, people's living standards have improved in general, and they urgently require effective protection of their own lawful property accumulated through hard work," Wang Zhaoguo, deputy chairman of the National People's Congress, said in introducing the latest draft of the measure in the legislature.

The legislation has been at least 14 years in the making and has been discussed by the standing committee of the National People's Congress six times.

Enjoying the fruits of one's own labor changes attitudes, but it remains to be seen how successful the above proposed measure will be. The article also states the following:

[In the legislation,] [t]here are multiple references to the need to uphold "the basic socialist economic system" and "regulate the order of the socialist market economy." The Chinese socialist property system "is in essence different from the capitalist property system," the draft stresses.

Obviously, China is not going to admit that their version of Communism has been a failure. Watch for more word games as the Communist regime jockeys to hold power.

In addition, as the nation moves in fits and starts toward a free-market economy, China might also want to stop giving the death penalty to scammers who sell overpriced ant farms to the public.