Housing complex in China open to foreigners only: media

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China issues proposals to ease land seizure disputes
Beijing (AFP) Jan 29, 2010 - China moved Friday to quell possible unrest by proposing new rules on seizing land for development -- including getting permission from the vast majority of residents before mass evictions. Land seizures for new buildings -- sometimes involving corrupt officials eyeing real estate profits -- have been a problem for years in China and have given rise to violent and deadly protests. The proposals, published on China's State Council website, suggest a raft of changes to the regime, including insisting that 90 percent of residents in old or damaged housing agree to move before their property is taken. In another proposal, those forced to move would be given the right to return, in a new building. Currently, many residents are relocated miles from where they lived.

Those responsible for relocating people would be banned from cutting water, heating, gas or electricity to force them out, as is sometimes the case now. The problem of land seizures has stirred an uproar recently as economic stimulus measures and an urban development push have fuelled a property boom and resulting rash of mass evictions in the rush to cash in. In a case that shocked the nation, Tang Fuzhen, 47, set herself on fire in November in Sichuan province over the planned demolition of her husband's garment-processing business. She died 16 days later. Violent resistance has been reported in numerous other cases as ordinary people take matters into their own hands. In December, five prominent Peking University law scholars called for the abolition of a statute that allows local officials to seize land if a different use for it is deemed in the public interest. The proposals published Friday are open for review by the public and a final text will be decided based on overall reaction to the suggestions.

by Staff Writers
Beijing (AFP) Jan 29, 2010
A property developer in China is inviting only "Western-looking" foreigners to live in a new development, sparking comparisons with the controversial concession areas in the 1800s, state media said Friday.

Ethnic Chinese -- even foreign passport holders -- will not be welcome to rent apartments in the Tianfu International Community in the southwestern city of Chengdu, the Global Times reported.

The ban on Chinese tenants was necessary to maintain the "purity" of the international community, an employee surnamed Wang in the marketing department of the Chengdu Hi-Tech Investment Group was quoted as saying.

Chengdu Hi-Tech Investment is the parent of Chengdu Hi-Tech Properties, one of the developers involved in the controversial project.

AFP calls to the developer went unanswered.

"The foreigners we are talking about are those Western-looking people. We want to ensure that the international community is pure," Wang said.

"Others may be welcomed later."

The first phase of the development will be finished in October. Once completed it will be able to accommodate 5,000 people and will have a church, schools, hospital and playgrounds, the paper said.

Zheng Xiaoming, head of the planning and construction bureau of the Chengdu National Hi-Tech Zone, told the China Daily the foreigners-only rule was to ensure the community was "truly international".

"No residence will be sold to locals. Instead they will be rented out exclusively to people from overseas," said Zheng.

The development has been criticised by Chinese residents in Chengdu and web users.

They say it is racist and reminiscent of the foreign concession territories created in several Chinese cities after it lost the Opium Wars in the mid-1800s and regarded as one of the most powerful symbols of Western colonialism.

"I think they are practising racial segregation by keeping out Chinese," Gao Song was quoted by the Global Times as saying.

The China Daily quoted a web user named The Fourth Brother as saying: "I cannot help but think of the time when China was weak and invaded by foreign powers. Only at that time was there communities where the Chinese were not allowed."

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Retired communists urge review of China dissident case
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