If a Newly Freed Tree Falls in a Formerly Communist Forest and No One Hears it, Does it Still Make a Sound?

Media reports of good news are rare, but today's events in China deserve more attention than Anna Nicole Smith's drug prescriptions, which seem to have captivated the celebrity-obsessed media (I would write 'liberal media' but since Fox News dedicates as much air time and web space to Smith as any other news source, I must be fair and balanced).

In my March 8th post, "America and China Move Steadily in Opposite Directions," I wrote about the irony inherent in Communist China's consideration of legislation to protect private property rights, while America, courtesy of the Kelo V. New London City (CT) Supreme Court decision, is moving in the opposite direction. At the time that post was written, the private property protection legislation in China was undergoing debate and had not yet been voted on, though its creators expressed optimism that it would pass. Activists seeking reform in China frequently exude similar optimism but often meet with rejection of their ideas, and so it was with cautious hope last week that I wrote about their efforts in the area of personal property protection.

Those hopes were rewarded today with the report that China did in fact pass the proposed personal property protection legislation, in what should have been a story that trumped meaningless celebrity "news" stories in today's publications and network news programming. The importance of the newly passed protection law should become more evident as private investors and entrepreneurs flock to China, since their profits, infrastructures, and intellectual property will belong exclusively to them rather than shared or owned outright by the Chinese government. China has been moving steadily toward a true market-based economy, and the lack of the right of ownership was a significant obstacle to private investors wanting to create and profit from their businesses.

The Washington Post report of today's legislative achievement in China described the event, in part, as follows:

legal scholars said it broke ground by establishing new protections for private home and business owners and for farmers with long-term leases on their fields.

These goals had long been sought by the entrepreneurs who now account for more than half of China's production; the swiftly climbing number of urban families who have bought their own apartments; and the millions of farmers whose croplands are increasingly coveted by real estate developers.

"This law speeds up our market economy development," said Chen Shu, a member of the National People's Congress and secretary general of the Guangzhou Lawyer's Association, who participated in drafting the legislation over the last several years.

Jiang Ping, a scholar who advised officials drawing up the law, said it is significant because it helps codify a property law system that has been evolving through regulation in recent years as the country moves away from socialism.

The final sentence in the quotation from the article is truly stunning. There have been monumental ideological battles over the past 90 years between socialism and free market capitalism, and the sincere wish of all who came of age during the Cold War was not that America would be forced to defeat these ideologies through armed conflict (while rightly making certain we could do so if necessary) but rather through friendship, shared economic interest, and internal changes within socialist nations. While this process was slow and often disparaged in the media, it wrought social upheaval in the former Soviet Union and its satellite states.

We are, perhaps, witnessing giant steps toward freedom and economic prosperity in China, and such legislative changes should be publicly recognized, praised, and rewarded by American political and corporate leaders. Momentum is critical to any political or social reform, and China's momentum is currently carrying it in the right direction.

China's Communist Party attempted to minimize media coverage of the debate on this issue, apparently out of fear that additional protections would be demanded too quickly by the Chinese people. The Communist desire to move slowly and pull tightly on the reins predictably resulted in more attention and support for the cause of property rights. According to the Post:

To muffle critics, Communist party censors had barred China's media from covering the disagreements. Gong's petition was ordered off the Internet, for instance, and the Beijing-based magazine Cai Jin was forbidden to distribute last week's issue because it contained discussion of the controversy.

The resulting irony was that the Communist party, having silenced its most faithfully Communist members at home, forced them to turn to foreign journalists to air their views, which then bounced back on foreign-based websites. At his book-lined Beijing University office, Gong was busy through the week receiving foreign television crews and newspaper correspondents.

Once a people tastes the sweet nectar of limited government and economic independence, it will no longer accept anything less. China appears to have recognized this and while seeking to apply controls to the pace of implementation, is allowing economic reality to lead it into what optimists are sure will be a bright future.