China's homeowners get small taste of democracy

暗战212

By Calum MacLeod, USA TODAY

BEIJING — A seat on the Gold Land Green Town homeowners association offers a chance to weigh in on fees for utilities and garbage pickup, to schedule yoga classes and to set rules for use of the plush clubhouse.
Rarest of all, it offers a chance to be a democrat in China.

The Communist Party, the sole power in China since 1949, has never permitted the existence of another political party. It has never opened the ranks of government to non-Communists or held anything approximating a national election. For decades, it has insisted on controlling every attempt by its citizens to organize themselves, even for harmless pursuits such as chess clubs.

China's resistance to democracy has drawn criticism from the West. Chinese President Hu Jintao, visiting Washington this week, will meet with President Bush, who has recently urged the Chinese leadership to extend greater political and religious freedoms to its people.

Related: Bush, Hu to meet this week

Yet democracy is tentatively infiltrating China, through the capital's upscale new town house, villa and apartment complexes. These are unlikely laboratories for a party experiment in democracy, but they are just that, says Shu Kexin, who has secured quiet party blessing to set up elected homeowners groups at scores of new housing developments here.

In passionate sales pitches to residents, Shu pours it on, likening elected representatives at Gold Land Green Town to America's founding fathers. He challenges property owners to model themselves after a different kind of revolutionary than the one they grew up worshiping.

"Do you want to be George Washington or Chairman Mao?" Shu asks a dozen residents in a meeting at Gold Land Green Town, an upscale apartment complex. "The Chinese Communist Party is letting us found a democracy classroom. Your committee is the first organization in China not to be led by the party — and the first to be elected by the people."

China's Communist leaders continue to reject any suggestion of broad political change that might weaken their power. Beijing has sent paramilitary police to crack down on rural unrest and encouraged censors to reassert control over an increasingly lively media.

But by allowing homeowners groups, Communist bosses are reluctantly ceding ground to a new force in Chinese society. "The middle class is growing — that's the reality that nobody can stop," says Li Fan, an expert on grass-roots democracy in China and director of the World and China Institute, an independent think tank in Beijing.

"In urban areas, there is now a rights-protection democracy, mostly from the homeowners associations. ... This has happened in places like Beijing and Shenzhen" — a southern city bordering Hong Kong — "and the government is nervous about it."

Experiments in democracy

The first homeowners groups began forming in the late 1990s.

Their emergence made them "probably the first legal, voluntary and democratic institution(s) in China," wrote F. Frederic Deng, a University of Massachusetts professor and expert on urban planning policies in China, who studied the groups.

Until 1992, city dwellers in China were not allowed to own homes, Shu Kexin said. Most Chinese lived for free in state-supplied housing or paid minimal rents to the "work units" — the factories, offices and schools — that dominated every aspect of their lives.

In 1998, the government stopped allocating housing and allowed state workers nationwide to buy their own apartments, Shu said. Developers raced to build living space.

China's only previous experiments with democracy have been elections for village chiefs in the countryside and residents committees in the cities. Increasingly in urban areas today, "if the party wants influence, it has to buy a house and then get elected onto the homeowners committee," Shu says.

Real estate is the dinner table talk of Beijing. Housing prices rose 19% in 2005 alone, according to Beijing's Statistics Bureau. More than 70% of Beijing families have seized the chance to buy their first homes; many have purchased second properties to lease out. Old housing blocks are being razed or renovated. Walls are being erected around once-open neighborhoods, and new gated communities surround the city.

At Gold Land Green Town, apartments sell for up to $125,000. The issues facing owners there are straightforward: Is the property management company charging too much for hot water? What election rules should the committee itself follow?

But it's becoming a jungle in the big city. The party's decision to empower homeowners groups is partly recognition that property owners have become prey for corrupt bureaucrats and unscrupulous developers — and need to channel their anger when they are victimized.

Typical is a high-profile case that began with a parking-fee dispute between property managers and homeowners at the Peaceful and Tranquil Home, an apartment development in northeast Beijing. The conflict has escalated into frequent violence.

Li Youcheng, head of the homeowners committee, says he was attacked by goons working for Jiaren, the property management company. "They wanted to kill me," says Li, who has scars on his back and head from ax and knife wounds he received in the attack in June. "The property company uses the underworld to scare the homeowners."

The day after the attack, Li left the hospital in a wheelchair to attend the meeting of homeowners that voted by a two-thirds majority to replace Jiaren with a new firm. "It was the first public referendum in Beijing," he says proudly.

Finding sense of civic interest

By creating a vehicle for middle-class Chinese, the party has kindled a broader sense of civic consciousness in some.

"I wanted to join the committee because if the management is bad, my property value will fall," says laser researcher Zhao Zhiyu, 41. "Then old Li (Youcheng) taught us about the laws and our rights. Now we know the public areas (of the compound) are ours, too — not just our houses. Many Chinese lack a sense of public interest, and don't mind stealing or harming that interest. We must change that."

Homeowners groups have not always found strength in numbers. At Peaceful and Tranquil Home, they voted in a new management company and hired guards with dogs to take control of the compound on New Year's Day.

The putsch failed. After confrontations with Jiaren's guards, many residents have moved out. Li and other holdouts had their electricity cut off after they stopped paying utility fees to the company, which also removed the benches where elderly residents congregated.

"Ten of us have been beaten since 2004. I have to carry a knife at all times," says Feng Juanjuan, who serves as treasurer on the homeowners committee.

Liu Mingwei, manager of Jiaren, denies the accusations. "We are a company, not the underworld. We have never sent people to beat others," he says. "The residents blame us for everything. I wish they wouldn't make so much trouble."

'It won't happen overnight'

Shu, the homeowners-group organizer, says democracy hasn't taken root in China because the country still suffers from a "courtyard mentality." The country's traditional, inward-facing homes encouraged people to feel that "everything outside the walls has nothing to do with me, and inside it's the head of the household who decides everything," he says.

After centuries of imperial authority, six decades of Communist rule have done little to change that thinking, Shu says. "Many homeowners chose committee members to decide all matters for them, instead of (volunteering for) the tiring, unpaid and often thankless task of serving on one," he says.

The Communist Party is taking no chances. Party officials have put out word that homeowners associations are not permitted to unite to form larger organizations. Each is to remain self-contained and independent, says Li Fan, the grass-roots democracy expert.

Still, many of those who serve on Beijing's homeowners boards are eager to take what they see as a logical next step: getting elected to the National People's Congress, the parliament that rubber-stamps party-approved laws.

"I want to make a bigger contribution," says teacher Lei Xia, a resident at Beautiful Garden in west Beijing.

Eighty-five percent of Beijing residents still lack legally approved homeowners committees. Lei says it's time to simplify the process of forming them and curb the influence of developers.

"The property managers here aren't here to manage me but to serve me," she says. "And the government is also moving this way, becoming more service-oriented and democratic. This is a gradual change. It won't happen overnight."

Inside the patrolled walls of Gold Land Green Town on a recent night, Shu reminds his audience that they are to plant and cultivate something new — not tear the current system out by its roots.

"We don't want war or revolution. You must be politicians and mediators and help the Communist Party to harmonize society," he says. "Democracy in China starts from here. Can we, the first generation of homeowners, be like George Washington?"

Posted 4/17/2006 11:12 PM ET  

真鲁迅

So Chinese goverment must to demostrate that he want to open the door to the world, and setup good envirnment for the people before 2008 Olympic Games.

Perhaps that's the final chance for all of us to catch up, otherwise we have to spent another several years.

ellen

看来中国在democracy方面的差距很不容易改善，所以政府的决心和态度很重要。现在想想华盛顿实在是太伟大太崇高了！