Rts Group: China Trying To Discredit Oilfield Investors -FT

Chinese officials from Shaanxi province are trying to discredit the case of a group of oilfield investors who claim their property was unjustly seized by the state, the Financial Times reports a U.S. human rights group as saying.

New York-based Human Rights in China said officials from the northern Chinese province had held “coercive private meetings” with influential individuals to discredit a lawyer representing the investors.

Controversy over the oilfields arose in the mid-1990s when local authorities in Shaanxi sold the rights to thousands of oil wells to buyers in a mass privatization, only to repossess them later. The case is symbolic of the pitfalls of privatizing national property in China, a process that can be disorderly and inhabits a legal gray area, the FT says.
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