Flagrant Communism!

Without meaning to start a trend, I couldn't resist posting about communism again.

The above picture is from Chongqing, China, where a woman resisted pressure from developers and government officials to allow them demolish her home. She claimed that the compensation offered was below market prices. Unfortunately, this hasn't stopped them from demolishing the 280 other buildings that once surrounded her house, excavating the site, and therefore leaving her unable to access her property. One of the sad things about the whole saga is the fact that the only reason the woman has even been able to resist for so long is the fact that she has political family connections, and the media interest that the story has gotten. According to a quote in the NY Times:

“If it were an ordinary person, they would have hired thugs and beat her up,” said a woman dressed in a green sweater who was drawn by the throng. “Ordinary people don’t dare fight with the developers. They’re too strong.”

After more than two years of battling, the house has since been demolished as the woman finally accepted a new offer of compensation which has allowed her to buy a similarly sized apartment in a different area of the city.

In the past month

"...the National People’s Congress passed a historic law guaranteeing private property rights to China’s swelling ranks of urban, middle-class homeowners, among others. Some here attributed Ms. Wu’s success to that, as well as her knack for generating publicity."

China's innovative integration of communism and capitalism is bound to lead to problems such as private property rights etc. But this is an example of the kind of flagrant corruption that is endemic in every communist system. Even though communism is supposed to benefit the people, a citizen in a communist system has nearly no civil rights. In urban China, it is a case of Chinese people being constrained by communist laws while being exploited by a capitalist system. Civilians can get bullied into accepting shitty compensation so that a PRIVATE developer can build high density condominiums to SELL and PROFIT from.

I'm not naive enough to believe that a similar case can't happen in a capitalist country, and of course not all capitalist countries are democracies, but I just feel there is an element of deceit in the Chinese system, and I don't really like it.

I'd like to know what others think.