That's a typical land use and zoning code violation matter. There is plenty of justification for creating zoning laws that protect individual rights. Abuses of zoning laws by government power seekers and do-gooders are common, and the cases wind up un the courts in the US. Private abuse is a matter that requires the collusion of government officials - and that means the taking of property or property rights or rights under zoning laws with out the free volition of the individual property owner.
Issues such as that in the PRC masquerade as private property issues when, in fact, all real estate land property except for collectives is owned by the PRC and is leased or use priveledges granted by the PRC.
Leasehold rights are legitimate real estate interests in a free society, and they are identified and agreed to with volitional agreements that may by defended in court. That case is one of an individual fight against the PRC who had unlawfully taken her rights. In the PRC, however, rights, such that Americans know, are unknown in the PRC. They only have priveledges that are "lawfully" accorded by the state. Administrative decisions determine the outcomes of disputes.
Good luck if you think that individual property owners have western rights in the PRC. They don't.
[text omitted]That is an example of Eminent Domain, and that is one of the more evil types of statism, and that exist in the USA and in the PRC. Eminent Domain, however, is the central principle of Communism, and in the USA Constitution it is a carry over from the kingdoms of Europe. The Framers of the US Constitution erred in establishing that principle in the USA. Nowadays we in the USA are finding repeated examples of private firms who get local governments to use the Federal Constitution principle of Eminent Domain in order to obtain properties that don't belong to them and that they cannot otherwise buy. That requires the bribery, clout, and suasion of government officials. Several cases are currently being brought through courts, and Supreme Court decisions will most certainly result. A Constitutional clash will amount to opposition of the pragmatist-statists and the advocates of individual rights and individual property rights.
There are a mix of type of disputes in each of these cases.
These examples in the PRC are similar to thousands of disputes that are happening in the USA Local, State, and possibly Federal Courts every day. The issues are the same: statism vs. the rights of individuals.
Most issues like those are routinely handled by the zoning boards, local and state courts.
The people in the PRC are taking their first baby steps by resisting PRC tanks, by writing ideas, and by bringing issues before the bureaucratic courts of the PRC and its agencies. They have millions of cases to go before enough quality decisions are considered to have the weight of law, or Common Law, and that as defined as principles may also be enacted into laws by free legislatures. It may take them one hundred years to get to where the USA is in terms of the recognition of absolute individual rights and the concept that the purpose of the state is to identify and to protect the rights of individuals.
The poster's quotation of URLs does a dis-service to individual rights everywhere by not explaining the relevance, meaning, and consequences of these issues.
Those people may or may not succeed in their cases, but the general sense of the omnipresent dictatorship sure as hell makes it self known in those reports. Note, also, that the news writers had to dance around the politically sensitive issues regarding confrontations to the authority of the state and its bureaucrats.
Writer, Charles Liu, of charles snipped-for-privacy@my-deja.com, is an obvious apologist of the PRC.
Note that Mr. Liu has not come out in defense of individual rights, and rather, he has provided a vigorous and mixed implied defense of the omnipresent propriety of the PRC state. Just because the little guy is fighting for some semblance of rights, does not mean that Mr. Liu is against the dictatorship. It is clear that the PRC state determines what is justice and that it is always omnipowerful.
Mr. Liu does, however, imply that Eminent Domain is a violation of rights, and that it should be opposed. That is a rare viewpoint, and Liu should be commended for that.
Mr. Liu may have more to say.
Ralph Hertle