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Public opinions solicited on property law
Chinese legislature on Sunday released its draft law on property rights in full text to general public for soliciting revision opinions. The draft law on property rights, with five chapters and 268 items, had been deliberated for three times by lawmakers by the end of June. Citizens could offer their opinions on the draft law prior to August 20. Then, the Commission of Legislative Affairs of the Standing Committee of the 10th National People's Congress (NPC) will revise the draft law according to public opinions and submit the revised draft law to the NPC Standing Committee for fourth deliberation. The draft law will be submitted to the fourth plenary session of the 10th NPC, which will be held next March, for the fifth deliberation and will be voted for adoption at the session. Normally, China's law draft could be passed through after three times deliberation. The draft law on property rights was, however, arranged to deliberate by lawmakers for fifth times before adoption. The draft law, defining and safeguarding all the property rights, is related to every citizen's fundamental rights. According to the draft law, property owners shall be given reasonable compensation when their properties are taken over for public use. Those who refuse to make the compensation will bear legal responsibilities. Over the past more than half century, China's farmers are allowed to save a certain piece of land to build their own houses. However, as an increasing number of urban citizens became affluent in recent years, they are fond of buying such kind of land from farmers to build villas for their weekend vocation. This time, the draft law on property rights says absolutely no to the phenomenon. The draft law defined that urban citizens were not allowed to buy the land saved for farmers' use only so as to safeguard farmers' fundamental property rights. The draft law on property rights defined that the ownership of parking lots, grassland and clubs in resident community should be shared by the residents, rather than the real estate developers. Wang Shengming, director of the Commission of Legislative Affairs of the NPC Standing Committee said that it will make citizens more assured to their properties to nail down the ownership of every property right. The draft law also aims to protect the state property by defining that administrative staff in state-owned enterprises shall bear the civil, administrative or even criminal liabilities if they transfer the ownership of the public property by buying stocks or selling companies at low prices, which lead to the public assets loss. While management buyouts (MBO) has been increasingly used to make state-owned companies into private ones in recent years, managers were often found cheating or engaged in malpractice damaging the interests of employees, investors and financial institutions but bringing themselves private gains. According to official statistics, China losses 40 billion yuan (4.8 billion US dollars) of state-owned assets annually. The loss of the state-owned assets has triggered dissatisfaction and condemnation across the country, as many companies' employees appealed to the governments for intervention. The draft law on property rights was also believed to be another critical
legislative step to protect citizen's private assets. A previous amendment was
made to the Constitution in March 2004. At that time, the clause that citizen's
legitimate private assets could not be violated was written into the
Constitution.
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