The picture that is believed to show the overturned sedan of Chizhou city’s mayor is distributed widely on the Internet. PROVIDED TO CHINA DAILY

BEIJING - Residents in Chizhou city of East China's Anhui province who overturned the mayor's car in protest at the local government's relocation compensation plan have won better conditions.

After the protest, the government has sweetened its incentive packages for the residents whose farmland was set to be requisitioned.

Early this month, some residents overturned the mayor's car during a protest over the government's compensation plan.

Of more than 30,000 yuan ($4,500) paid for every mu (about 0.07 hectare) of requisitioned land, the residents, most of them farmers, would only receive 10,000 yuan, according to the initial compensation plan, the Shanghai-based Oriental Morning Post reported on Wednesday, quoting Xu Shaohua, a local resident in Meilong village of Chizhou, as saying.

The rest of the compensation would be saved in a pension fund set up by the local government, he added. This meant that the residents could only receive the remaining compensation after they reach retirement age.

The initial plan was designed to take into account the residents' social security problems after their loss of land use, Liu Xiaoli, a local publicity official, told the Oriental Morning Post.

A total of 2,215 households and 7,800 residents were required to give up their farmland and be relocated to make way for the construction of an industrial park, according to the local Chizhou Daily.

From Nov 2, hundreds of local residents blocked the office of the industrial park and a main highway through their village to protest against the compensation plan, both newspapers reported.

The blockade ended after the residents became so agitated that they overturned a car that they later found was carrying Chizhou city's mayor to the scene. The mayor managed to escape from the crowd without suffering any injuries, Liu said.

The local government began to adopt a softer approach after the incident by reducing the amount of compensation to be set aside in the pension fund and providing more cash incentives for early birds accepting the revised compensation plan, according to the papers.

China Daily

(China Daily 11/25/2010 page5)