Official Praises Eviction Workers as ‘Most Lovable’
Jianan Yu/ReutersWorking at a demolition site in preparation for new development in Hefei, in the eastern Chinese province of Anhui.
China’s demolition workers, the people who tear down houses and move residents — often against their will — to make way for new construction, have been called many things. But they have rarely received a paean like that from a district official in Xinyang, in the central province of Henan.
Shao Chunjie, a district Communist Party secretary, told a gathering of demolition workers that they were the city’s “kindest, most venerable, most lovable, most capable of moving one to song and tears, most praiseworthy people,” according to a statement postedon an official website.
Mr. Shao’s tribute was fulsome, and all the more striking because the praise was for workers who carry out one of the most controversial policies in China. The removal of residents from their homes to make way for construction projects provides the opportunity for huge returns for developers and local governments, but it also sets off disputes that can turn violent and at times deadly.
Homeowners resisting eviction and fighting for higher compensation have staged demonstrations and clashed with demolition workers, police officers and security guards hired to remove them, and they have sometimes even set themselves on fire in protest. Last month, a man in Shandong Province who was resisting an effort to seize farmland was killed when the tent he was sleeping in was set ablaze. Seven people were arrested on suspicion of arson, including a developer and a village official.
Mr. Shao delivered his ode to the Henan demolition workers last Dec. 25. His talk was criticized locally, but it was not until a major Chinese newspaper, the Guangzhou-based Southern Metropolitan Daily, picked it up on Wednesday that it was propelled to national levels of scrutiny and ridicule.
The December posting on the government website said that 48 of the more than 200 residences in the area to be cleared had been the “most difficult of the difficulties.” But the statement continued that with “a never-give-up spirit, this tough bone has been swallowed, these tough nails have been pulled out.”
The newspaper interviewed one of the displaced people, a man named Chen Gang, who said that demolition crews and security guards stormed his house on Dec. 20, smashed windows and doors, knocked his father and mother to the ground and dragged him out. He was held in an office as bulldozers flattened his house. When he returned he found only his computer.
“All our other things were buried under the ruins,” he said.
An official responsible for the demolition work, Wang Dongmin, told the newspaper that Mr. Chen had signed a compensation agreement and that there were no outstanding issues. Mr. Chen responded that his parents had been pressured by the government and that he had felt forced to sign the agreement.
The local government’s praise of the forced evictions has been criticized on Chinese social media sites as a sign of the frequent conflict between the goals of officials and of residents when it comes to development projects.
“I think the Xinyang secretary’s words are heartfelt,” Yuan Yulai, a lawyer, wrote on his Sina Weibo account. “And that shows the depths to which our society has sunk.”
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