BEIJING - In this city of continuous demolition and construction, Huang Zhenyun was just another person fighting for his family home, until China's top propaganda outlets decided to make him a hero.
People's Daily, the flagship newspaper of the Communist Party, and China Daily, the English-language mouthpiece of the government, praised Huang this spring for asserting his rights under the national constitution, amended this year to protect both human rights and private property.
"Huang Zhenyun not only studied the constitution articles carefully but also was courageous enough to pick up the weapon of the constitution to protect his own rights," the People's Daily wrote in a "salute" to Huang published in its weekly "Democracy and Rule of Law" section. "We can clearly feel the power of the old man. It is this power in hundreds of millions of people that push our society moving in the direction of greater democracy and civilization."
It was a striking official endorsement of the individual right to resist, and went on to tell readers that people need to "fight" to protect their rights. The article went even further, condemning the forced relocation of people such as Huang: "If a certain policy or system can't stand the test of the constitution and would force the people to take up the constitution as a weapon, that policy or system doubtlessly should be abdicated."
This sort of progressive, populist rhetoric periodically raises the hopes of average citizens that maybe the rulers in Beijing will come to their aid against corrupt local officials - the people who run day-to-day life with virtually unchecked power. The People's Daily article might have raised Huang's hopes, too, except that on the same morning it was published, his home in the heart of the capital was torn down at the order of local government officials.
"The constitution says that private property should be protected, but they knocked down my private home and trampled the constitution," Huang, 62, said in an interview. "Although the revised constitution has been made public, it has not been put into effect. Lower-level corrupt officials just don't do things according to the constitution."
China's revision of its constitution is one link in a broader evolution of rule of law in China that has been more rhetorical than real. On paper, China is building a foundation of legal theories and procedures that offer a measure of hope to lawyers, intellectuals, journalists and rights advocates that some day disputes will be decided according to rules rather than the whims of power.
