A Chinese homeowner has become a national cause celebre for holding up a major property development in southwest China in a three-year battle to protect her house.
Wu Ping's (吳平) modest two-story brick dwelling in Chongqing is now one of the most recognizable homes in China thanks to widely circulated pictures of the structure sitting defiantly in the middle of an excavated construction pit.
A court-set deadline for her to relent passed on Thursday but the 49-year-old Wu, dubbed the "stubborn nail" by Chinese media, vowed to fight on in a case that has highlighted the widespread property disputes in China.
PHOTO: AFP
"I'm not stubborn or unruly, I'm just trying to protect my personal rights as a citizen. I will continue to the end," Wu was quoted as saying in the state-run Legal Daily yesterday.
After accepting compensation offers from the builders of the planned residential complex, 280 households have moved out.
But Wu, who now lives elsewhere because of difficulty accessing her home, has not budged even as bulldozers excavated the site around her.
A legal battle has raged since she rejected the compensation offer as she has maintained that she cannot be forced to move out.
A local court ordered her to allow the structure to be torn down by Thursday, although she continued to refuse and it was not immediately clear what steps authorities would take next.
Property disputes are rife in China, often involving illegal land grabs by developers in collusion the government.
The national parliament passed a landmark law solidifying private property rights this month partly to combat such disputes.
Wu's case has generated wide discussion in the media and Chinese Web blogs.
"If this case of the `lonely island' persists, it could become a landmark test for Chinese law," an editorial in the China Youth Daily said yesterday. "If the government does not respect people's rights in the case, it will raise suspicions about the entanglement of civil rights, property development and government interests."
‘UNUSUAL EVENT’: The Australian defense minister said that the Chinese navy task group was entitled to be where it was, but Australia would be watching it closely The Australian and New Zealand militaries were monitoring three Chinese warships moving unusually far south along Australia’s east coast on an unknown mission, officials said yesterday. The Australian government a week ago said that the warships had traveled through Southeast Asia and the Coral Sea, and were approaching northeast Australia. Australian Minister for Defence Richard Marles yesterday said that the Chinese ships — the Hengyang naval frigate, the Zunyi cruiser and the Weishanhu replenishment vessel — were “off the east coast of Australia.” Defense officials did not respond to a request for comment on a Financial Times report that the task group from
Asian perspectives of the US have shifted from a country once perceived as a force of “moral legitimacy” to something akin to “a landlord seeking rent,” Singaporean Minister for Defence Ng Eng Hen (黃永宏) said on the sidelines of an international security meeting. Ng said in a round-table discussion at the Munich Security Conference in Germany that assumptions undertaken in the years after the end of World War II have fundamentally changed. One example is that from the time of former US president John F. Kennedy’s inaugural address more than 60 years ago, the image of the US was of a country
BLIND COST CUTTING: A DOGE push to lay off 2,000 energy department workers resulted in hundreds of staff at a nuclear security agency being fired — then ‘unfired’ US President Donald Trump’s administration has halted the firings of hundreds of federal employees who were tasked with working on the nation’s nuclear weapons programs, in an about-face that has left workers confused and experts cautioning that the Department of Government Efficiency’s (DOGE’s) blind cost cutting would put communities at risk. Three US officials who spoke to The Associated Press said up to 350 employees at the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) were abruptly laid off late on Thursday, with some losing access to e-mail before they’d learned they were fired, only to try to enter their offices on Friday morning
CONFIDENT ON DEAL: ‘Ukraine wants a seat at the table, but wouldn’t the people of Ukraine have a say? It’s been a long time since an election, the US president said US President Donald Trump on Tuesday criticized Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy and added that he was more confident of a deal to end the war after US-Russia talks. Trump increased pressure on Zelenskiy to hold elections and chided him for complaining about being frozen out of talks in Saudi Arabia. The US president also suggested that he could meet Russian President Vladimir Putin before the end of the month as Washington overhauls its stance toward Russia. “I’m very disappointed, I hear that they’re upset about not having a seat,” Trump told reporters at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida when asked about the Ukrainian
RSS