I think property rights is rapidly emerging as a central revolution of our time in many areas. It touches even the United States, as the Kelo case demonstrates. Private property is the one thing communist regimes oppose. It’s also the key to freedom and the only basis for rule of law. And what a coincidence, in the countries where there are the biggest fault lines on property rights, a communist regime is somewhere in the background, be it China or Venezuela.

Via Fiscal Study (a great blog), linking Global Voices, and also via Simon World, a very important Chinese blog from Shenzhen called ‘Shenzhen Ren’ is reporting a new property rights protest in China’s rapidly developing coastal city. I’ve been to Shenzhen and know it is a city on the cusp of development, bordering Hong Kong as its own Tijuana, like Tijuana full of internal immigrants, many of whom have high hopes for becoming something much more. Shenzhen Ren reports an absence of dialogue on the price of investment homes where prices were raised beyond what a market expected to pay. It’s not exactly Hernando de Soto stuff but there really was violence over this worth noting. Read the whole thing here.