If adopted and enforced, legal scholars said, the regulation would represent an important shift in the government’s attitude toward the rights of individual property owners. Homeowners would be entitled to obtain market price compensation for their dwellings on state-owned land and be allowed to file suit, if necessary, to forestall demolition.

More than a few contests have turned into life and death struggles. In 2008, one couple climbed onto the roof of their Shanghai house and lobbed a Molotov cocktail at a bulldozer, giving up only when the bulldozer demolished a wall of their home.

The regulation would ban the use of violence, illegal coercion and the cutoff of water and power to uproot homeowners. It also says government officials should hold public hearings or take other steps to solicit public opinion about development plans.

Further reading: NYT