Facing problems in connection with resettlement projects, the Beijing municipal government is taking more effective measures to regulate such projects, where sometimes local people are forcibly driven out of their homes by the wrecker's ball.

The Municipal Bureau of Land Resources and Housing Management has revoked the licenses of 13 companies formerly authorized to demolish buildings as part of resettlement projects, because they had forcibly driven people out of their homes or did not pass the bureau's annual check-up of their performance.

The bureau launched a campaign in late September to investigate and regulate the operation of the roughly 300 companies in the city licensed to do demolition work.

The three-month-long campaign, which will run to the end of this year, is a major move by the city to ease the increasing problems arising in the relocation of people pushed out of their homes to make way for real estate projects.

The bureau opened a hotline early last month for residents to report violations of resettlement regulations.

Actually, relocation problems are a nation-wide phenomenon connected with the drive for urbanization and the ongoing reforms in property rights.

According to a Xinhua report, the letters and visits to the State Letters and Complaints Bureau to make complaints about resettlement problems have been rising steadily over the past three years.

The number of visits concerning relocation last year jumped 47 percent by August this year on a year-on-year basis, the report said.

Being forced out of their homes to make way for demolition is one of the major factors of these complaints.

For demolition projects, the city government issued a document stipulating only people's courts and district government, following the ruling of the Municipal Bureau of Land Resources and Housing Management, can implement mandatory demolitions.

(China Daily November 27, 2003)