Asia Sentinel

It was a great picture and an irresistible story, but the saga of China’s nail house was more complicated than the media – Western and Chinese – let on. We can thank bloggers for digging into the reality.

In February, China’s Internet chat rooms were filled with pictures of a lone house isolated a dozen meters above its surroundings after developers carved out the land all around it for yet another project while the defiant Chonqing homeowners refused to budge.

The story, about what would become known as the “nail house”, partly because of its precarious position atop a column of dirt and partly because the owners refused to have it nailed down, became an international symbol of the fight of China’s common man against rapacious developers. The story played itself out on the pages of the Economist magazine, the New York Times and others. And, when the homeowners won, it was taken internationally as a sign that China’s notoriously malleable institutions are maturing enough to provide protection for common citizens due to pressure from China's growing media savvy middle class.

It is a delicious story line and it is tempting to portray this as a David and Goliath story. But the details uncovered by Chinese bloggers and journalists reveal a more complicated story. The local government and developers in this case, unlike so many others, had been following the law far closer than most of their peers even before the national or overseas media arrived on the scene; the media circus hyped the nail house even as villagers elsewhere were beaten and chased from their homes; and the nail house owners, virtually deified on the Internet as revolutionaries, have done little to earn such praise.

The case began 14 years ago when a developer acquired the right to build a shopping center on a centuries-old site in Chongqing’s Jiulngpo District and served notice to residents to get out. Yang Wu and his wife, Wu Ping, were the only ones to not accept. Undeterred, in 2004 the developers started to dig the pit around their home at 17 Hexing Road, cutting off electricity and water in an effort to force the couple to flee.

Now you see it...

The story had all the highlights of a cable news vigil. Sina.com even offered money for more images, according to China Digital Times’ extensive coverage. When the State Council Information Office banned coverage, it only spurred Chinese bloggers to pursue the story more vigorously on their own. One blogger named Zola traveled to Chongqing to provide on-the-ground details. Zola has since been labeled “China's First Citizen Journalist”.

Finally, on April 3, the Nail House was torn down after a compromise was reached between the owners and developers.  But despite the consistent attempts to paint this as a victory for the little guy, the government appears to have gone to extraordinary efforts to safeguard the rights of otherwise powerless citizens. While the Chongqing Housing Administration seems to have filed for forcible relocation and demolition on the behalf of developers, for instance, the courts in Chongqing pushed back deadlines for demolition three times.

... and now you don't.

Developers pointed out that she had a right to file a lawsuit, but she refused, saying it would drag on for three to five years. The courts in the end provided mediation. The national government seems to have stayed out of the case, with the exception of the brief media blackout imposed by the State Council. The blog EastSouthWestNorth even found evidence that the local government fought to end the blackout, quoting presiding judge Zhang Li saying, “We cannot be isolated from the media”.

In fact, the final compromise, which consisted of an equivalent property at a different location along with roughly 1 million yuan in compensation, was only a relatively small improvement on a settlement offered in early February, long before the media circus came to town.

Considering the staying power of the case, the nail house would appear to have been a modest victory for the rule of law before the media showed up rather than after, and a statement that the local government is not nearly as monolithically corrupt, at least in Chongqing, as is often assumed.

That isn’t to say there aren’t aspects of the case that are emblematic of the problems that plague China's urban development. The property was sold to developers by the government without consultation with the residents as to the best use of the property, and the developers, not the government, are responsible for compensating residents. Even if there is no collusion in a particular case, it certainly appears so when the local government washes its hands of responsibility for the community.

Hence Wu Ping's criticism that claiming the development, in this case a shopping center, is in the “public interest” rings hollow. The Housing Administration, which issued permits for the forcible relocation and demolition of the property, seems little more than a strongman for the developers. The bulldozing of water pipes and electricity lines was in fact illegal under existing law, a pressure tactic not uncommon in such cases.

A number of reports have claimed this is a test for China’s new property law, which doesn’t even come into effect until October. It may be an omen, but not a test. If this was a test of any laws, it was of the ones that already exist and are not terribly well enforced.

Despite the claims that Madam Wu Ping harnessed this power, she appealed to bloggers after they found her, and primarily thanked them via the mainstream press in numerous interviews and photo ops. This is relatively new, but it recognized the blogs’ influence after the fact.

There has been a tendency to describe the nail house case as ushering in a new era of individual rights. But even the lead judge in the case, Zhang Li, stated that there are scores of such cases each year. There have been other Nail Houses and there will be more. Rather than a sudden revolution, the Nail House seems more a blip on a gentle curve of changes in China that have been going on for at least 15 years, since the process of “Opening Up and Reform” set in motion the process that continues today.

So what was really accomplished? There was no public punishment of the developer or Housing Administration for illegally cutting utilities. There was no media coverage of thousands across the country who have been, or are about to be, forcibly evicted. On March 27th, just as the media ban on the nail House was lifted, Radio Free Asia reported on the forced demolition of a village outside Beihai, Guangxi, during which 20 people were hospitalized in clashes with riot police. Local press coverage was suppressed by Public Security – at a time when the Chinese press was heralding the nail house as a triumph of the rule of law.

While photos of the conflict at Beihai were spread across the Internet, they were unable to bring to it the same attention that was afforded the nail house. Meanwhile, many in the Chinese press have gone on to herald the nail house incident as a triumph of the rule of law. It may well have been the lure of a spectacular picture, a house seemingly suspended in mid-air, that made the nail house incident so alluring.

And will we hear again from Yang Wu and Wu Ping? Or are they satisfied having taken care of themselves? Wu Ping, after all, said she was fighting for “her legal rights.” She never said anything about fighting for anyone else’s.

Comments (3)

Subscribe to this comment's feed

Show/Hide comments

Show/Hide comment form

Write comment

Name

Website

Title

Comment

smaller | bigger

Subscribe via email (Registered users only)

I have read and agree to the Terms of Usage.

Write the displayed characters

Add Comment