China’s Great Leap Forward on Property – Peter Ford
From The Christian Science Monitor:
Of all the steps that China has taken away from its Communist past since reforms began nearly 30 years ago, few have boasted the symbolic power of the law that parliament is due to pass next Friday.
The Property Law, for the first time since the 1949 Chinese revolution, offers comprehensive legal protection to private property. Quite a move from a ruling party whose name literally means “The China Collective Property Party.”
It couches that protection, though, in language that often seems more solicitous of state property – a sign of the subject’s sensitivity. “This is a very loaded text politically,” says one Western diplomat. “It says a lot about the current balance and trends of the regime.”[Full Text]
