Will The CCP Start Seizing Private Properties in China Again? What If the CCP Falls?
Hello, everyone! Welcome to “Inconvenient Truths by Jennifer Zeng”.
There are many kinds of robberies in the world, but I am pretty sure that you’ve never heard about the particular robbery that I am going to talk about today. The Chinese term for this robbery is called “經租房（Jing Zu Fang）”. There is no equivalent term in English for it, as this is another unique thing that only exists in the CCP’s “socialism with Chinese characteristics”. But the reason why this robbery is happening again concerns every one of us. That’s why I am talking about it today. I will also respond to a few questions from a viewer from my last show. So please stick around to the end.
“Government Managed Private Rental Houses”
First of all, what is “經租房（Jing Zu Fang）”? There really is no English translation for it; but by summarizing the stories behind this “Jing Zu Fang”, perhaps we can call it “government-managed private rental houses”. This issue got people’s attention again because of some recent events. Let’s watch some short video clips from Pingyao County, Shanxi Province in China first.
Man: “Come, let the people of the whole country see. The people's government of Pingyao County, the people's police, the people's city managers. Our case is still in court, but they come to take away our houses. Is this a society of the rule of law? This is the People's Government of Pingyao County under the leadership of the Communist Party of China. They came to rob our houses during the litigation.”
Woman: “This has become a world of bandits and hooligans! They’ve become bandits and hooligans. This is our private property. They send so many people over to lock the house and seal it, saying that it is theirs. Private property to be seized, seize private property. Pingyao County Government has become bandits and hooligans!”
Woman: “You tourists, come take a look! Pingyao County Government behaves like bandits and hooligans! The certificate of property ownership is still in our hands, but they are here robbing our private property. Forcibly robbing our private property! They come but don’t show any of their IDs. I don’t know where they come from. These people are in uniforms. Looks like they are police and city managers. Yes, just those people. Get away from them. They will beat people. Last time they pushed down an 80-year-old man and beat up my husband. I called 110 and reported it to the police. One month passed, not one word of reply. This is Pingyao County Government! This is just how the Pingyao County Government is! They are bullies, bandit, hooligans!”
Well, the above events happened recently, to just one of the millions of so-called “Jing Zu Fang”, or “government-managed private rental houses” in China.
You know, when the Chinese Communist Party, the CCP, took power in 1949, the first thing it did, was to kill about 2 million landlords in the countrysides and confiscate all their land.
In big cities, the CCP took over the businesses of “capitalists” through the so-called “socialist transformation of capitalist industry and commerce”.
But how about people’s houses in the cities? The CCP couldn’t call you a “capitalist” just because you own one or a few houses you inherited from your parents or earned through your own efforts, right?
So in 1958, during its “socialist transformation”, the CCP came up with a way to deal with people’s houses.
The CCP said, from now on, the government will manage your extra houses for you. Turn in your houses, we will rent them to people who need them. We will collect the rent, maintain and manage the houses for you, and give you part of the rent.
70% of Private Rental Houses Taken Over by the CCP
So, according to the CCP’s official figures, altogether 116 million square meters of private houses from 624 K households became “Jing Zu Fang”. This amounted to about 70% of all private rental houses.
In other words, the CCP took over 70% of all the private rental houses in China into its own hands and “managed” these houses for the owners.
And how much were the owners paid? They got only 20-40% of the rent. The rest was taken by the CCP.
At Least 40 Million People Affected
However, when the Cultural Revolution started in 1966, the CCP stopped paying the owners any rent.
Also, many more private houses became “Jing Zhu Fang”. So after the Cultural Revolution, the houses of about 4 million families were taken over by the CCP.
As most of the house owners had already died, their children and grandchildren had become the lawful inheritors of these houses. Suppose one house has 10 lawful inheritors now, over 40 million people are affected by the so-called “Jing Zhu Fang”.
The Long Fight To Take Back The “Jing Zhu Fang”
During the 1980s, when the CCP adopted the so-called “Reform and Opening-up Policy”, it started to return some of the “Government Managed” private houses to their owners.
But for people in Pingyao County, Shanxi Province, and other places too, things were not that easy.
First, people in Pingyao didn’t know that these houses were being returned until almost 10 years later, as the CCP didn’t tell them.
After learning that those “Jing Zhu Fang” could be returned, some families started trying to get their houses back.
One of these is a family in Pingyao County. The father went to the government building 5 or 6 times per month but didn’t get the house back until he died in 1999.
After the father died, his two sons continued the fight for more than 10 years.
In 2012, the local government finally notified them that they now could take back their houses. However, since the tenants in the homes still owed 20,000 yuan in back rent, the brothers couldn’t get them back until they made it up.
With no other choice, the brothers had to pay the rent for the tenants.
However, the government then said they still needed to pay some sort of “exchange fee” to get their houses back. So they again paid 120,000 yuan as the “exchange fee”.
Now they finally got the ownership of their homes back. But the tenants inside refused to move out. The brothers then had to pay the tenants 180,000 yuan to get them to leave.
So, after spending nearly 300,000 yuan, or 44,000 US dollars, the brothers finally got their grandfather’s houses back in May 2013.
Short-lived Ownership, The Nightmare Comes Again
After getting the houses back, they borrowed some 4 million yuan to renovate them and turned them into hotels in 2016, since Pingyao is a very famous tourist attraction because of its long history and very unique architectural style. So running hotels is very good business.
After running their hotel for only 4 years, in June this year, the brothers suddenly received a notification from the Pingyao government, saying that the government is going to take back their property again.
Altogether, 224 households in Pingyao County had their houses seized by the government. People estimated that some of the properties could be worth as much as 30 million yuan or 4.42 million US dollars!
So, from 1958 to 2020, after more than 60 years, the CCP is once again taking away people’s private properties.
Why Now?
The problem now is, why now?
It was said that because these properties, especially those hotels are making good money, the local government became jealous and felt like pocketing the money itself. One CCP leader said to the house owners: “Pingyao’s tourism is so developed, but the Pingyao government has no money and it's all in your private hands, do you think it's OK this way?”
When house owners tried to reason with the county government, one deputy commissioner threatened them, "You don't have to make a scene here, the houses will definitely be taken, and you can sue whenever you like!"
This reflects a very important issue: local governments in China are desperately short on revenue, and have to conduct this kind of outright robbery again.
This also reflects the very fundamental nature of the CCP: It always changes its stance, and never keeps its promises.
I think after the CCP said that it would open up its market to the world, reform its system, and learn from the West, many people around the world believed that the CCP indeed intended to do so.
But now, this outright robbery in Pingyao County is making people fear that after the “test run” in Shanxi province, similar things will also happen in Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, Shenzhen, or even in Hong Kong, and another round of “socialist transformation” will take place.
A Matter of Life or Death
The year 2020 fundamentally changed so many things. For the CCP, it is now a matter of life or death for its regime. In order to sustain itself, the CCP will certainly try to seize people’s assets by all means possible. We may start to see more similar Pingyao events in China soon.
So, for the poor Chinese people, they have no way to escape this kind of fate or to seek justice. But for foreign investors, if you still have assets in China, it is high time that you consider leaving.
Responding to Viewers’ Questions: What If the CCP Falls?
Next, I will respond to some questions from a viewer from my last show. If you also have questions, please write to me, and I will do my best to respond. My email address is in the description box. You can also leave your questions in the comment area. I have been trying to read and respond to as many comments as possible. But I can't guarantee that I will have time to respond to all of them.
Well, the comment and questions I got are these:
Everyone wants the demise of the CCP, but what kind of political system would follow its demise? As generations of Chinese people have been brainwashed by the CCP ideology and the Chinese people have had no opportunity to even have any underground efforts to experiment with any CCP alternatives, are they capable of managing themselves after the CCP is gone? Would there be a civil war? How would this end scenario be different from that of the USSR’s breakup?
Well, I must say these are very challenging questions and may need an entire book to discuss them all. Here I can only respond very briefly.
Yes, the brainwashing and control of the CCP is indeed very, very tight. However, sometimes it needs only a little bit of truth to crush all the lies.
Let me give you a real example. You may or may not know that once I worked for the Development Research Center of the State Council of China. It is the highest level government policy research and consultant body, and almost everyone there was a CCP member.
So there was a woman there who was particularly pro-CCP. She had the nickname “Marxist old lady” because whenever she spoke, you felt like she was reciting sentences directly from the CCP’s textbooks.
Anyway, after working for decades for the CCP, and before she was about to retire, she was given a free trip to Europe as a reward for her life long hard work for the CCP.
She traveled for about one month in Europe. I don’t know what she saw or experienced. At that time, I had just graduated from the graduate school of Peking University and had never been to any overseas countries myself.
After that “Marxist old lady” came back, one day when she saw that there was no one else in the office except two or three young folks like me, she said to us in a very confidential and sincere tone, “You are still young. If you have the chance, go abroad and live there.”
She was apparently encouraging us to leave China and live in a Western country.
I was so surprised by her sincerity and humanity during that short moment. I had never expected such sincerity and humanity from a “Marxist old lady” like her.
So, one month in Europe had completely changed her world views that had formed throughout her entire life while in the CCP’s China. After she saw the real situation of what the party described as “evil capitalism”, she encouraged her young colleagues to leave China and seek a future in the “capitalist countries”.
So, my point is, as long as we can somehow help the brainwashed Chinese people learn the truth, their thoughts can be changed very quickly.
If you have watched my video about A Former “Content Reviewer” for the CCP, you would already know how tightly everything on the Internet in China is controlled. Ordinary Chinese people have no chance at all to learn the truth.
If the free world can first of all tear down the CCP’s “Great Fire Wall”, and enable the Chinese people to gain free information, things can be changed very quickly.
I am not sure whether a civil war will break out or not. China is such a huge country, so I won’t be surprised if one day the CCP’s central committee loses control, and local officials start to act on their own.
No matter what, the most important thing for the outside world to do is to open up and maintain a free flow of information between China and the free world so that the world can talk directly to the Chinese people, and the Chinese people can then directly seek help and support from the world.
We should trust that people are born free; and people’s yearning for freedom will never die. Trust that, act upon that, and we will see a free China one way or the other.
That’s all for today. Thanks for watching. Please subscribe to my channel, and check out my other videos.
Thank you. See you soon!
10/07/2020
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