I've actually always found it surprising how much _trouble_ China seems to have with this: https://www.theguardian.com/cities/gallery/2014/apr/15/china...

~Everywhere has some form of eminent domain available for infrastructure projects; China does not seem to be notably effective in using it.

Also, this article is about a train. Like an actual train, not a train line. While a couple of somewhat slower maglev lines exist in China, this article isn't about them.

In the West we've just had a year and a half of thinking like this though. Perhaps in some cases it's okay to care less about what individuals and businesses want if there is a clear societal good. I'm a property owner and I strongly believe in property rights, but the right (and legitimacy) of an individual owning and occupying land for their own personal interests when land is limited commodity which we all need access to is questionable to me.

Just saying because it sounds like you're framing this in a negative way, but I'm not sure it is. IMO the West probably respects the right an individual has to land a little too much.

This isn't actually that true. Yes, China is pretty efficient at getting people to move out, but there were many projects that had to be built around people that refused to move out. The laws may have changed since then, though.

In the US, the time consuming part is not really the eminent domain, but rather the environmental regulations: even if the regulations themselves do little or no actual difference to the process of building, the amount of time you need to spend on doing analyses, getting reviews and approvals is very high, and it’s pretty expensive too. You also need to deal with vindictive environmental litigants, who use the environmental law to either block the project altogether (by requiring more and more analyses and reviews), or extract spoils in exchange of dropping litigation.

There are real benefits to environmental laws, the US is cleaner and nicer than it’s been for greater parts of 19th and 20th centuries. At the same time, it is important to recognize the very real costs carried by environment protection. People these days seem to be all about “green” and “environment”, and seem to be for any and every environment protection measure. What does not happen is analysis costs vs benefit of these measures.

Eminent domain is a commonly used tool in most nations in the world, you know.

There's an airport close to my home. The airport management committee, assisted by the town's representative have evicted many homes. And yes, I live in a perfectly fine democracy...

At least this is a public project. In the United States, we have no problem using eminent domain to tear down homes for private business interests (read: Foxconn in Wisconsin [1]).

[1] https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/dec/08/wisconsin-fo...

“Yes but no”

Municipal governments in China are much more similar and relatable to western systems than the national government.

Sure.

OTOH, in 2021 California it's very hard to pull off even minor projects, because so many people & institutions have veto power.

No. There is a lot of laws and regulations for eminent domain/land acquisition in China. For property in cities/towns, normally a third party will come in to assess the land and property value. "Regulations on the Expropriation of Houses on State-owned Land" governs land acquisitions in this case, and it says: "The compensation for the value of houses to be expropriated shall not be less than the market price of the real estate comparable to the houses to be expropriated on the date of the public notice of the house expropriation decisions. The value of the houses to be expropriated shall be assessed and determined by real estate appraisal agencies with appropriate qualifications in accordance with the procedures for evaluating houses to be expropriated”. source: https://urbanlex.unhabitat.org/sites/default/files/urbanlex/...

For rural land, legally it is known as "village collective owned land". Land acquisition is governed by "Land Administration Law of PRC". The village committee votes to accept a land acquisition compensation scheme. Section 48 says:" Compensation for people under land acquistation must ensure their quality of life does not fall below before the acquisition". Compensation must consider current land use, its GDP value, its resources, and its location. Compensation must be given first before the land acquisition. Living standard should higher than before acquisition. In practice, the compensation of usually includes, lump sum cash, a new residential home, the community condition around the new residential home is also part of package. For example: my grand parent's village was land acquired. They used to have a pretty poor home by modern standards. Bathrooms not connected to city sewage, poor bathrooms, bad heat insulation, far from hospitals, grocery stores, school. The compensation was 500k RMB lump sum payment(the home had a living area of ~150m2, around 3333rmb/m2), a condo style home in the town center 10km away built in 2018(100m2, three bedrooms, valued at 15k rmb/m2). A community hospital, child care facility within 100m2. A large scale city hospital within 2km. Family thought it was a good deal. Actually, a lot of people joke about praying for land acquisitions because they can get a pretty large jump in quality of life. source:http://www.npc.gov.cn/npc/c30834/201909/d1e6c1a1eec345eba237...

Also, people can sue the government for land acquisition disputes. Some sample cases are here: http://www.court.gov.cn/zixun-xiangqing-95912.html. Case 5, the plaintiff found the compensation decision to be "lacking in facts, determined using illegal procedures, selection and use of evaluation entity illegal, evaluation price clearly lower than market price". The court agrees with most of plaintiff's case, and order the government to rescind land acquisition order. Government appealed, higher court sided with plaintiff again.