Quote Originally Posted by tonyfoale View Post
I questioned "imminent domain" because that was what sossol mentioned "the laws in China doesn't favor going straight to imminent domain as is common here in the US."

I am well aware of the difference between imminent and eminent but I was unfamiliar with either the Eminent Domain or Imminent Domain terms. Eminent Domain would seem to be more used in the US, I would more likely expect to hear the term Compulsory Purchase. However, I am very familiar with the concept of govt theft having had land stolen for road widening when there was plenty of unused scrap land on the other side of the road. Compensation was derisory and I lost many trees amongst them some plum trees which produced the nicest plums that I have ever eaten.
Or the land get stolen by the government to build a road around some hysterically historic structure, or so goes the story I once read, about of how a farmer's property was cut in half by a later abandoned road. True or not I don't know. Anyway, supposedly there was this cabin or some other structure owned by the National historic society with a significant portion of land surrounding it right in direct line with where a proposed highway was to be built. The simplest thing would have been to bulldoze the cabin and build the highway straight but noooo! the government decided to take create a right of way right through a farmer's fields. In doing so it would have made it next to impossible for him to farm one side or the other. He refused to sell so the land was condemned and taken from him. Almost before the surveying was complete a storm demolished the structure I guess the planet didn't get the memo. Now any rational thinking person would have decided that since the structure was no longer an obstruction the highway planners would have made the road straight saving nearly a mile of construction distance and lots of money. The road was built through the farmer's property causing him to have to load his equipment and haul it several miles before being able to access the other half of his farm. A few years later the jog in the road was deemed dangerous so it was summarily straightened out through the land where the storm had demolished the hysterically historical structure but leaving the old road in place. No one can make an argument that many governments have rational thought processes, maybe in some aspects China does but as a whole I doubt it.