China proposes landmark law stating private property is not theft

It's not what the red flags, the hammers and sickles and the Marxist-Leninist rhetoric would have you expect, but China's Communist leaders have drafted a proposal to safeguard private property, saying rising personal wealth needs better legal protection.

The proposed property law being debated by China's annual parliament, the National People's Congress, is the first to cover an individual's right to own assets in China - and it is proving political dynamite.

"Enacting the property law is necessitated by the need to uphold the basic socialist economic system... and by the need to safeguard the immediate interests of the people," said Wang Zhaoguo of the Communist Party's politburo, who introduced the bill.

"People's living standards have improved in general, and they urgently require effective protection of their own lawful property accumulated through hard work," he told 2,835 delegates gathered in the Great Hall of the People.

While the venue, and the language of his speech, is a throwback to the Soviet era, the legislation is a groundbreaking effort to protect private wealth by a government that only a generation ago preached egalitarianism and jailed or executed entrepreneurs as "capitalist roaders". The party is taking this step because a lack of clarity about property rights has allowed corrupt local officials to snatch up land, businesses and homes at will, without giving compensation, causing widespread anger and undermining the government's efforts to encourage private enterprise.

The government needs the growing army of Chinese entrepreneurs to pay taxes and generate jobs.

It's not exactly what Marx had in mind, but this is socialism with Chinese characteristics, and the leadership have wrangled over the wording since 1993.

It's an enormously contentious issue. Hardline Communists have previously blocked the bill from becoming law, believing that it is a step too far from the Marxist-Leninist principles at the party's core. Last year, the proposal received seven readings and was eventually rejected by conservatives who said it would worsen social inequalities. Purists fear the bill would promote the sale of state assets by unscrupulous officials to entrepreneurs.

This year, the 40-page final textis very likely to be passed on 16 March when it comes up for vote.

The bill is being sold as a way of protecting the rights of farmers. Official figures show that nearly 200,000 hectares of rural land are taken from farmers every year for industrial purposes, one of the main reasons for the "mass incidents", or petitions and protests, in rural areas.