In a major change to its 1949 constitution, China's parliament has stipulated that "Citizen's lawful private property is inviolable". As Premier Wen Jiabao said:
| "These changes to the constitution are of great significance to the development of China." |
So far as human rights are concerned the wording in the constitutional change is:
| "The state respects and preserves human rights."and the words "martial law" have been removed from the document and replaced with "state of emergency". |
This last is said to have been a major factor in the Tiananmen Square democracy protests in 1989. I doubt very much that China is about to abandon its single party collective dictatorship and replace it with anything we would recognise as 'democracy' any time soon, but these changes are undoubtedly of great significance, specially as it is widely believed that China will become a very major (and perhaps the predominant) world power as this century progresses.
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