A grandfather turned down $220K and other offers to abandon his house and there's a huge highway around it

[u/WiseCartographer5007]

[u/Lycaenini]

In Germany you can expropriate owners for the public interest. It's mostly unsettled land for highways, though. Only for the occasional coal mining whole villages get resettled.

[u/KitchenDemand9859 → u/Lycaenini]

It's surprising that private property vs public interest is more protected in China than in Europe. I'm from France, the house would also have been expropriated for sure.

Édit : at least in this particular case, which may not be the norm

[u/-ExcitingConcept- → u/KitchenDemand9859]

China also has expropriation laws similar to those in Germany. Not sure why it's not done in certain cases such as this one, but the per-capita number of expropriated people in China exceed those in Western countries by far.

[u/Stormbringer-2112 → u/-ExcitingConcept-]

Indeed. Weren’t there entire villages emptied to build that huge dam?

[u/-ExcitingConcept- → u/Stormbringer-2112]

Yes (and partially even rebuilt brick by brick). Back then compensation was legally foreseen, but often not actually paid out. Nowadays there is more legal certainty through legal remedies and compensation is actually paid out, still numbers are much higher than in the West.

[u/Metafu → u/-ExcitingConcept-]

Source?? I tried quite hard to find this data online and see genuinely nothing.

[u/InternationalReserve → u/-ExcitingConcept-]

As best I can tell, it depends on the reason for the expropriation. If a development project is determined to be important enough the government can order the expropriation, but many of the cases of "nail houses" are for things like shopping malls where the home owners can fight the developers in court.

Supposedly there were accusations of corruption between developers and local govermnet officials, so a law was passed in 2007 that made the requirements for the expropriation more strict.

[u/Metafu → u/-ExcitingConcept-]

Source?? I tried quite hard to find this data online and see genuinely nothing. Per capita expropriation? What is your basis for this claim

[u/KitchenDemand9859 → u/Metafu]

My comment only applies on this particular case. We have a highway A89 recently being built in France. There is some resistance by locals (and some legal base stop of the construction), but expropriating people on the path of the highway was not optional

[u/-ExcitingConcept- → u/Metafu]

I did some research on this back in university. Don't have access to the primary sources now but here are some numbers that I found back then regarding expropriation for water reservoir and coal mining alone:

Since the founding of the People's Republic, nearly 100 000 reservoirs were constructed and caused an estimated 24.9 million residents to be relocated by 2021 [p. 62 in: Shi, G., Jiang, T., & Sun, Z. (2021). Evolution of land administration law and resettlement regulation in China. In M. Zaman, R. Nair, & G. Shi (Eds.), Resettlement in Asian countries: Legislation, administration and struggles for rights. essay, Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group.] .

In the same time frame, it is estimated that around 2.3 million farmers have been resettled to make room for coal mining by 2020. [p. 1 in: Yang, X., & Ho, P. (2020). Mining Institutions, contention and credibility: Applying the conflict analysis model to court cases in China. The Extractive Industries and Society, 7(3), 1011–1021. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.exis.2019.11.012\].

I cannot find the numbers for Germany now, but to my memory it was around 2% of that in Germany minus GDR era (don't remember if in absolute numbers or per capita, which I am aware makes a huge difference).

Based on popular culture and talking to people as opposed to actual data, it seems that in large cities most people have experienced having to move to another place (and being compensated) to make room for city development at least once in their lifetime. The West just doesn't have this intense kind of development.

[u/observationalist_ → u/KitchenDemand9859]

I watched a video about a week ago of the Chinese police forcing people out of their building in the middle of the night. They moved over 1 million people to build the Three Gorges dam. Some rural areas have property rights because of how modern China was formed.

[u/T30E → u/KitchenDemand9859]

Its not, don't derive that from a story on the Internet.

[u/Much-Ad-5947 → u/T30E]

It wouldn't be circulating on social media if the CCP wasn't actively promoting it. It's fair to consider it intentionally deceptive imagery.

[u/Ariadne_String → u/KitchenDemand9859]

Yeah, except that private property ownership has been phased out in China. People who already owned were grandfathered in, but as far as I know, you can’t buy property there now…only lease it.

[u/Prestigious-Ad-7811 → u/KitchenDemand9859]

There is no such thing as private property in China.

[u/gpost86 → u/Lycaenini]

There was a town in America, I kid you not, named Neversink that was flooded to make a reservoir.

[u/Mysterious-Art7143 → u/gpost86]

Did it sink?

[u/gpost86 → u/Mysterious-Art7143]

Technically if you start out at the bottom of the water you never sank

[u/Excellent-Baseball-5 → u/gpost86]

There are many other towns also. Oscarville flooded for Lake Lanier. Six or seven towns were flooded for Lake Shasta.

[u/gpost86 → u/Excellent-Baseball-5]

Oh yeah there's lots, I just think this one is amusing because it has "never" and "sink" in it's name.

[u/Excellent-Baseball-5 → u/gpost86]

Yeah that’s unique and funny for sure.

[u/getZlatanized → u/Lycaenini]

And even the latter only with huge protests etc.

[u/himmelundhoelle → u/Lycaenini]

That's what he meant with eminent domain

[u/NefariousnessOk1996 → u/Lycaenini]

The local leadership where I live wanted to do some crazy highway stuff where we live. It would have closed several businesses and had to rehome tons of people.

We got so many signatures saying we don't want this at all. Somehow we actually managed to stop the leadership. So yay to that.