Owners affected by the "New China", to 430 Street Tongbei, Shanghai

Shanghai Correspondence - In 430 of the street Tongbei played a story of the most common in China. The house that was promised to them is destruction, its people must move out. Real estate developers and local officials have other plans for the neighborhood northeast of Shanghai, bordering the Huangpu River and faces the huge towers of the financial heart of the country.

Since autumn 2009, eviction notices were distributed because of "urban redevelopment". Residents will be relocated, we are promised, but miles away from downtown on the edge of town where real estate is cheaper than 30,000 yuan (3,430 euros) per square meter during these days in their area of Yangpu.

Another point of contention, only the floor space will be taken into account, while the house is four floors. Its people argue the obligation of the State to protect private property, under section 13 of the Chinese Constitution. And the official reason cited, conservation land, is illegal anyway in the big cities, to curb speculation, "observes Ms.

Bo, 60, who lives on the fourth. His parents bought the land in 1947, two years before the founding of the People's Republic, she repeats to visitors. After having used all the remedies in Shanghai, she and her husband, aged 66, left to join the "petitioners" hoping to find justice in the capital.

"In August 2010, we traveled to Beijing to denounce the behavior of local authorities. But after three visits to the housing ministry with documents proving the illegality of the deportation we got nothing," Ms. annoyed Bo. The subject comes up constantly in the news from China. The death on Christmas Day, a former village chief of Zhejiang province, south of Shanghai, has once again revived the popular anger.

The shocking photos of his corpse, beneath the wheels of a truck, bring the Internet to question the thesis of the accident: did he not been assassinated for defending the peasants expropriated from his village ? In October last, an official Yihuang in Jiangxi Province, had already sparked national outrage by publishing an open letter following a death during an eviction.

He developed his argument bluntly: "When you live in a spacious and comfortable accommodation, when you walk down the street when journalists write an article condemning the policy of forced demolitions for luxury hotels, imagine that the ground beneath your feet was obtained by the government through a forced demolition? Thus, to some degree, we would not have urbanization without these forced eradication.

And we would not have a "brand new China" without urbanization. "Street Tongbei, the conflict flared up after the lull of the Universal Exhibition, in which nothing should interfere with the image of the largest Chinese city. The methods are the most barbaric. On December 29, 2010 in the middle of the night, residents awoke with a start.

Dozens of migrant workers, wearing their helmet and armed with crowbars and Molotov cocktails would swoop down, forcing their doors, climbing windows using ladders, beating them, threatening them with death, throwing ice water on their mattresses, their stealing their money. The residents all tell you call the 110 number, the police, historical their mobile phones to support it.

But no one to rescue them, despite a sound worthy of a city under siege. And this surveillance camera that had been shot ... The attackers, paid by developers, had prepared their coup, they Explosives were equipped with fire extinguishers but also to avoid burning. They have decamped once dawn arrived, when Ms.

Bo has threatened to give herself to death. Since that night December 29, 2010, the inhabitants of the house above which floats the flag Chinese live barricaded. Terrified at the thought of venturing into their own neighborhoods, they are fueled by their neighbors. Entries are now equipped with metal railings and the wall are painted death threats directed at anyone who tries to attack again.

At the top, a banner ironically around the famous revolutionary slogan "Without the Communist Party, no new China". This time the inhabitants of the house from the street Tongbei wrote "Without private property, no new China". Harold Thibault

• Great Thread on Aikido's Ueshiba in China (30/12/2010)
• Nouvel's Newest Project on the Danube: Take architect Jean Nouvel and a... (06/01/2011)
• Joseph Chine : Kenya (06/12/2010)
• Hidden Risks of Erectile Dysfunction 'Treatments' Sold Online (12/12/2010)
• Behemoth Doll Boutiques - The World's Largest Barbie Store is a Veritable Doll Citadel (GALLERY) (09/01/2011)