Couple’s house torn down after three-year standoff

CHINESE authorities have torn down a couple’s house after a three-year standoff that captivated the nation, a witness and state media said yesterday.

Wu Ping and Yang Wu have been fighting off bulldozers in downtown Chongqing since 2004, when they were one of 280 households asked to make way for a redevelopment project in the booming southwestern city of nearly 28 million.

Their two-story brick building was clawed into dust by an earth mover as a few dozen reporters and people looked on late Monday night, according to one witness, Zhou Shuguang.

The demolition took about three hours, said Zhou, who photographed the event and posted the pictures to his blog.

The couple’s resistance was portrayed by state media as heroic, and chat rooms have been flooded with declarations of support for the stubborn pair.

In recent weeks, Wu, the wife, met tirelessly with domestic and foreign media to publicise the couple’s fight for better compensation.

Wu said earlier that she had been offered $258,000 in compensation or two higher floors in the planned complex — both of which she turned down because she wanted lower levels in the new building so she could run her restaurant.

The official Xinhua news agency said that Yang, the husband, had been holed up in the house, surviving on deliveries of food and water, before leaving Monday afternoon.

The couple agreed to move into a similar-sized apartment elsewhere in Chongqing, Xinhua reported, but they could not be immediately reached to confirm the deal.

Property disputes and illegal land grabs have accelerated in recent years as China’s economy expands at double-digit rates and farmland is gobbled up for industrial parks and skyscrapers.

Government officials have often sided with developers, touching off riots and protests.