Homeownership for Marxists

Scripps Howard News Service: Although it was done in a "don't ask, don't tell" sort of way, China has enacted its first set of laws specifically protecting private property, which should give a real boost to the private sector that already drives 65 percent of GDP in that nominally communist country.
The People's Republic of China was founded in 1949 on the Marxist-Leninist principle that all property, aside from certain personal items, belonged to the state.
Mao's distorted vision
Party chairman Mao Tse-tung declared that the changeover from individual to "socialist, collective ownership" in agriculture, industry and commerce "is bound to bring about a tremendous liberation of the productive forces. Thus the social conditions are being created for a tremendous expansion of industrial and agricultural production."
He had it exactly backward. China began decades of impoverishment that only began to end when the introduction of a market economy broke the shackles of socialism and set China on the path to becoming an economic superpower.
But some in China's old guard still cling to the old socialist ideals. The private-property law passed the People's Congress 2,799 to 52, but out of deference to the feelings of the old-timers, China's leaders clamped down on debate and public discussion of the change.
The change has been in discussion for 14 years, but it was only in 2004 that China amended its constitution to recognize the people's right to private property.In a sense, the new law only ratifies existing reality. Private cars, homes, businesses and other assets are a fact of life in China.
Despite Mao's epic and brutal efforts at national brainwashing and indoctrination, a generation of entrepreneurial Chinese coming of age won't remember when property wasn't private.