From ‘Rustless Screws’ to ‘Nail Houses’: The Evolution of Property Rights in China

This article addresses property rights in China under four headings. I begin by placing the Chinese case within the larger context of property rights literature. The second section reviews the existing scholarship on property rights in China and identifies existing lacunae. The third section provides the broad contours of the contemporary Chinese intellectual and political discourse over property rights in China. And finally, I offer several cases of property rights that illustrate the variation in the scope of the concept of property rights in China and suggest possible avenues for future research.

The right of property is the guardian of every other right, and to deprive the people of this is in fact to deprive them of their liberty.- Arthur Lee, Virginia, 1775

You reproach us with planning to do away with your property. Precisely so; that is just what we intend.- Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels¹

The fact that a legal or economic model does not exist for an activity or a behavior is no reason to oppose it, because the laws can develop out of experience and practice.- Wu Guoping, Yangtze Water Resources Commission²

     

Asia-Pacific news

This column provides a country-by-country analysis of the latest legal developments, cases and issues relevant to the IT, media and telecommunications' industries in key jurisdictions across the Asia Pacific region. The articles appearing in this column are intended to serve as ‘alerts’ and are not submitted as detailed analyses of cases or legal developments.     

The principle of security safeguards: Unauthorized activities

The principle of information security safeguards is a key information privacy principle contained in every privacy legislation measure, framework, and guideline. This principle requires data controllers to use an adequate level of safeguards before processing personal information. However, privacy literature neither explains what this adequate level is nor how to achieve it. Hence, a knowledge gap has been created between privacy advocates and data controllers who are responsible for providing adequate protection. This paper takes a step toward bridging this knowledge gap by presenting an analysis of how Data Protection and Privacy Commissioners have evaluated the adequacy level of security protection measures given to personal information in selected privacy invasive cases. This study addresses both security measures used to protect personal information against unauthorized activities and the use of personal information in authentication mechanisms. This analysis also lays a foundation for building a set of guidelines that can be used by data controllers for designing, implementing, and operating both technological and organizational measures used to protect personal information.     

China and Japan: ‘Hot Economics,Cold Politics’

According to integration theory, growing economic interdependence between China and Japan should have spilled over into more cordial political relations. The opposite occurred, as summarized in the phrase “hot economics, cold politics.” Even as both sides acknowledge the value of cooperation for shared benefit, commercial and strategic rivalries have intensified, calling into question the validity of integration theory.     

China and America: The Great Divergence?

While there have been many sources of tension in U.S.-China relations since the Cold War, they have been held in check generally by circumstances that have inclined the governments to cooperate. Yet, the relationship remains multi-faceted and fragile, and various frameworks and forecasts—like the contemporary “Great Divergence” framework, which speaks to the apparent disjunction between economic and security affairs—have proven to be incomplete and incorrect.     

Grand Strategy: The Fundamental Considerations

Grand or national strategy has emerged as a critical issue in security studies. Adam Garfinkle recently opined that American grand strategy has died a silent death. Too much attention has been devoted to definitions, or debates over the utility of strategy. Not enough consideration has been given to the complexities of actually building a robust strategy amidst that effectively integrates all elements of national power within a complex bureaucracy. Oddly, the exclusion of politics contradicts our understanding of war and conflict. Likewise, not enough attention has been applied to the fundamental components of building a competitive strategy that can be sustained over time. This essay offers an introductory discussion of the basic considerations or components of national strategy.