A problem of calculating compensation
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During the country's development and improvement in the public's living conditions, the government needs to undertake projects for infrastructure construction - building highways, revamping shanty towns or setting up industrial zones, for instance. The need for land arises and occupants of the land have to be relocated. The occupants certainly need to be compensated.
The compensation is for the dismantlement or loss of their property on that piece of land. There should be no compensation for the land, because all land belongs to the country, that is, the whole population of the nation.
Therefore, the problem is calculating the loss. The government, on behalf of the nation, retrieves the land by paying the occupant for the loss on the basis of the principle of "exchange at equal value". The calculation of this "value" should be reasonable. It should neither be as small as the government tries to minimize by taking advantage of its strong position, nor as large as the occupant tries to maximize by taking the land hostage for ransom. There must be a reasonable standard.
This, however, still cannot be the final solution. The occupant may well insist that he or she does not want the equal exchange by saying that "I simply don't want to move because I like this location (For instance, the location helps kids in schooling)".
Therefore, the calculation of the loss should include inconvenience and loss of the intangible benefit. Besides these factors, there should be no more considerations.
One argument some residents of "nail households" hold is that real estate prices have soared to astronomical figures and therefore compensation should be raised accordingly. They are wrong.
The thing that has gained value during their holding of the land is the land itself, rather than their houses or property. They have no claim to that increment of value.
Holding State-owned land against public interests in anticipation of a mammoth "compensation" is holding the public interest hostage to a dirty ransom. In such cases, the government has the right to dismantle "nail houses" by force.
Of course, what is said here does not include cases in which some local governments sell land to "developers" for profit.
Such cases are not rare nationwide. And this accounts for the coexistence of illegal "forced dismantlement" of residential houses and the sometimes yielding to unreasonably greedy demand for compensation.
The author is assistant editor-in-chief of China Daily. He can be reached at liushinan@chinadaily.com.cn.
