Chinese Nail Houses

In rapidly developing China, it is apparently common to see old ramshackle housing sitting unperturbed amid intense construction. The Chinese call these properties nail houses. They are often the only standing structure on a block that has been completely demolished, making them look like nails sticking out of a flat board. The analogy also suggests that the property owners themselves are like nails who the hammer has missed and who stubbornly refused to be pounded down. Since most of the large-scale real estate development projects in China are commissioned by the government, developers are able to be a lot more coercive with holdout residents. They begin carrying out projects around an occupied domicile knowing that eventually the resident will be forced to leave and construction will be allowed resume as usual. I’m not sure what recourse property owners have available to them in the Chinese courts. There are evidently scenarios in which residents have secured the right to remain in their homes. The lengths to which developers will go to compel holdouts to leave are rather striking:

This crater in Shenzhen (mainland Hong Kong) is supposed to be the site of an 88-storey financial center. 389 other property owners accepted compensation for their land. The 340th refused. He claimed that his building was worth more that what they were offering him. The developer argued that when Hong Kong merged into the People’s Republic of China the land reverted to state property and that he no longer held any claim to it. The Chinese government refused to intervene on the matter, so the developer began removing earth around the house and effectively isolating it from the rest of the city. After 11 days, the property owner and the developer finally came to an agreement over compensation.
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It is only within the last 30 years that people in China were even allowed to own land. If someone owns land it is usually to conduct business on. Many small shopkeepers own the land upon which their stores sit. Because of this one will see dilapidated newsstands and restaurants sitting in the middle of shiny, new public plazas.

This house in Chongqing and its owner became famous as eminent domain holdouts. The house sat right in the middle of a block where developers wanted to build a high-rise apartment building. The owner of the house wanted an apartment in the building of comparable size to her current house. The developer of the apartment building offered her a small sum of money instead, which she vocally refused. To this the developer and construction company isolated the house and its resident by digging out a ten-meter deep pit around the property. They did not even leave her with a causeway to the street. With no electricity gas or running water, the owner had supplies like food and propane hoisted up to her. She resisted seizure of her house for 2 years before finally settling with the developer in 2007 for 3.5 million yuan (US$453,000).

Rage and Reaction

Republicmagazine.com ran this report under the headline “Municipal Communism: Norfolk Land Grab Soviet Seizes Land, Censors Protest.” The City of Norfolk, Virginia apparently condemned a number of industrial buildings and sold the properties to nearby Old Dominion University. Among them was Central Radio Company—whose excellent company website can be found here—which responded to the city’s unfavorable compensation offer and their subsequent loss in court challenging the offer with the sign pictured above. The city later cited the business for erecting the sign, saying that it violated an ordinance limiting the size of sign advertisements within the neighborhood to 60 sq. feet. The Republic must have saw this story in the local newspaper and decided to report on it themselves to agitate the readership and foment a little outrage.

The Republic, for those not familiar, is of a class of publication that is in the business of monetizing bile. I hesitate to recount this information as fact for fear that the story may have been distorted to some degree by the writer’s heavy political bias. His writing in the article is larded with indulgent little quips about how the situation is reminiscent of Stalin’s Soviet Union and how the municipal entities involved are crypto-socialist shadow groups. Commenters who responded to the article saw fit to espouse revolution, specifically a kind revolution that is predicated on disobedience:

Paul BpPP says: “The revolution occurs when the victims cease to cooperate.”
– Karl Hess

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Alice Ray says: “The end of cooperation is what ended Prohibition. Juries simply refused to convict anyone. Under law, they are not required to convict no matter the evidence, if they deem the particular violated law to be spurious.”

Delia Lopez says: “The Revolution is coming Ron Paul for president a Liberty- Candidates in congress and we can make a difference. Get busy it is time.”

The fixation on revolution is interesting. I left my own comment about how the “victim” hypocritically criticizes the government for eminent domain while at the same time running a business that contracts with the Navy and is largely dependant on government spending for its success. What I was attempting here was to surreptitiously advance a dissenting argument using the tone and political position of reactionary discourse. I wanted to prove the implicit contradictions in the political platform upon which the article was unquestionably predicated. I’m certain now that I failed at this. I failed because his kind of reactionary attitude is not supported by any intelligible platform; rather, it grows out of a basic resentment and frustration with all institutions. Both the writers and the readers of this article are the sort of people who are outraged by their own insignificance. The fierceness with which the message is delivered is compensation for the impotence of the speaker. The practical result is divisive, but I think the underlying dilemma is one we all have in common. In the absence of any real and substantive control over lives and our surroundings our only recourse is bleating complaint.

Mutilated Acres

I’m generally for tyranny of the majority and depriving individuals of rights and personal privilages if there is utilitarian benefit to be had. State power in the modern world is colossal and terrifying. As an instrument for executing our collective will it is unparalleled. Like any force, it can be applied toward creation as well as destruction, or more accurately both simultaneously. The people are the hammer, government the chisel. I say that as one who owns no property and is in possession of nothing in need of defending. Were I properly middle class I would have more to lose. I might have misgivings over the possibility of my land and property being reapportioned by “the people” and trampled over by strangers as a public way or some crowded park.

Outside of Stoughton, Wisconsin, a farmer whose land is bisected by I-90 painted this sarcastic message on the front of his barn, in plain view of everyone passing by on the highway:


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I grew up in Madison and have passed this barn many times. I used to wonder about the resentment and frustration this person must bear toward the very presence of this road. It passes right in front of his (or, less likely, her) house. The family that lives there is confronted with it every day. The message is sardonic but also kind of light-hearted, as if the individual who wrote it has long ago given up making threats and has since resigned himself to a complacent grudge. It is worth noting that this road was expanded into an interstate highway in the mid-50’s. It’s been there for close to sixty years and has probably just become part of the landscape of this region for most people. But for that one angry man it remains an intrusion. He calls it a mutilation because to him it’s a wound that will never heal fully. He directs the message at everyone driving on the road, because, really, everyone who uses this highway is implicated in the injustice. His anger has transcended from a petty and impossible dispute with the government to a broader incitement of the system we all as a people have submitted him to. This message is intended to remind us of what we’ve done, and what we continue doing.

In recent years, he has added the bit about the 2nd amendment on his machinery shed. Maybe this represents a new dimension in his philosophy of resistance: protecting and keeping alive the possibility of armed opposition.