China targets land grabs, forced evictions in new law
Farmers in China have faced forced evictions and illicit land grabs for decades often with little or no compensation in return as China raced to urbanize and settle social unrest in the country.Millions of hectares of rural land were taken away from farmers in the past three decades and given to developers. Rural migrants living in run-down inner-city areas have also been forcefully evicted in recent years as cities fight congestion."Land disputes trigger half of an estimated 100,000 social protests in China every year, making them the second leading cause for public unrest after labour disputes," Ni Yulan, a lawyer who advocates for property rights of low-income families in Beijing said.Ni has been jailed twice for her advocacy and is paralyzed from the waist down, a result she says of be...