Later this week, China’s legislature, the National People’s Congress (NPC), is expected to pass a law concerning property rights. It will mark the first time in the history of the People’s Republic that legal protection will formally be provided for private property. The bill, initial drafts of which were written in 1993, is currently going through its eighth reading. Supporters of the legislation consider it long overdue, as China’s thriving private sector now accounts for some two-thirds of GDP. In a March 8th article, Hong Kong’s pro-Beijing newspaper Wen Wei Po cited Chinese sources as saying that the lack of legal protection for private property had resulted in capital flight worth tens of billions of dollars. Opponents of the bill, led by Gong Xiantian, professor of Marxist legal theory at National Beijing University, succeeded in derailing it at last year’s NPC session with an open letter that criticized the proposed legislation as unconstitutional and betraying the fundamental principles of socialism. The government seems determined to prevent debate from jeopardizing the bill’s safe passage this year. On March 8th, Hong Kong’s Ming Pao newspaper reported that publication of the March 5th issue of Caijing, China’s leading economic journal, was delayed due to pressure from higher-ups to pull its cover story, an examination of the property law debate. Eventually published on March 9th, the edition carried on its cover a story about the recent turbulence in the stock market. But this is, after al, the age of the Internet. On the evening of March 4th, just hours before the hard copy of the original March 5th issue was to be released, a condensed version of the original cover story was published in the magazine’s online edition and picked up by a number of business websites. As of last Friday, all traces of this story had been erased. Those searching for it are met with messages such as “The information you requested does not exist; please try again” or “Erroneous information: the article you requested does not exist, or has been deleted by the web master.” Needless to say, the item is long gone from Caijing magazine’s official website. According to a Chinese journalist who subscribes to Caijing and who read a condensed version of the originally planned cover story, the article featured interviews with two legal experts and an economics professor. It detailed the history of the much-debated and frequently revised bill, characterizing the controversy surrounding the proposed legislation as a tug of war between different power groups. Meanwhile, Gong Xiantian, the professor of Marxist legal theory whose open letter criticizing the bill has been co-signed by more than 700 scholars and government officials, is griping about government censorship. According to a March 9th report in the Hong Kong tabloid Oriental Daily, the party committee of Gong’s employer, National Beijing University, has repeatedly asked him to stop soliciting signatures. The same article cites Gong as saying that domestic media in China are prohibited from reporting opposing views: “And they say this is a socialist democracy? It’s even worse than a capitalist democracy.”
