A few years ago, after a vehement round of inner city renewal, I suddenly found many sidewalks in the city proper of Beijing became so narrow that pedestrians often had to compete with bikes and even automobiles for a space to walk. The place where we used to enjoy strolling were given way either to bike lanes or to thoroughfares, or taken for the parking of automobiles that are ever increasing in the city.

Some sidewalks left to pedestrians can only accommodate one foot. You really have to master the skill of walking on the rope or on tiptoe to walk on such a narrow path. Along with the shrinkage of sidewalks are widened roads for traffic, mainly for cars. The streets become so wide in Beijing and many other cities that pedestrians find it a real challenge to cross them. Indeed you often have to struggle to cross a street, either racing against the time lest the traffic lights change before you manage to cross it, or climbing up or down a bridge or tunnel to cross the street – for that you have to take extra walk to find the facility.

While many of us might be unconscious of it, in the narrowed or vanished sidewalks and in the excessively widened streets is the encroachment upon our rights – our rights to space and to public facilities.

If these rights look too trivial to be taken so seriously as rights of the person, then we do witness other cases in which people's living was jeopardized. Some people were forced to move out of their houses in the inner city so that shopping malls, new high-grade residential housings and other profitable real estate projects could take the site. The compensation could not afford the uprooted residents to remain living inside the city and they might have to leave the convenience of commuting to and from work to move into the "sleeping towns" in the suburbs, often far away from their workplace. And even for the housing there they might have to pay out of their years' savings in addition to the compensation. As many of the uprooted residents belong to low-income groups, the added living cost may further reduce their family revenue and marginalize them.

More people, mostly rural dwellers, were displaced by big projects like hydropower conservancies. The dams had their farmland and homes inundated, compelling them to resettle in a totally strange environment or struggle to start a new career. Many became impoverished after such displacement, as the compensation could not sustain them for long. Some projects could introduce pollution and incur health problems to local people before they realize it.

Development vs. subsistence

All these are encroachments upon people's right to subsistence, which is a basic human right. And all these violations happened in the name of development, and the right to development is also a basic human right.

This could be puzzling: How could it happen that one basic human right is in contradiction with another basic human right and even jeopardize it?

One simple reply is that the rapid development of modern society has brought about unprecedented diversity, which would certainly result in diversified interest pursuits. While development is people's common desire, different interests of different groups could clash in the pursuit of development.

For instance, almost everyone wishes to have his or her own car and the car population in Beijing is increasing by about 10,000 daily. Of course the car owners want greater space for them to move faster, while the city authorities assume wider streets could help alleviate the traffic congestions. Yet not every citizen in Beijing with a population of over 15 million drives a car everyday. The city planning tilted too much in favor of the car-driving group is likely to neglect or even hurt the interests of the people who don't drive.

In the case of a real estate development project, there also may be different interest groups involved: the real estate developer who aims at profits in the transformation of the area from a habitat of low-income groups into a community of high-income people; those who expect to move in after the project is completed and enjoy all the convenience living in a high-brow quarter; those who have to move out to distant suburbs but might enlarge their living space, though at extra cost; those who used to have business in the area and may have to increase their input to come back and continue their operation after the renovation or could no longer afford the increased charges; and government officials in charge of the area who are eager to add the project to their political achievement. It is possible that some officials could have gains through the deal with the developer. All these groups have different interest pursuits. As Jeffrey Soule, director of the American Planning Association's outreach and international programs, observes in an article about China's city planning: "(Trendy) and selfish architects are often manipulative. Many of the academics, whose advice is sought after, are now making money by either acting as commercial contractors, or joining foreign firms to get design project. This makes them unqualified to give advice in an official capacity because there is a conflict of interest."

Due to these complicacies, failure to balance these differing interests could give rise to violation of certain group's rights and incur their resentments or even social instability.

Aside from diversified interest pursuits, the issue of development itself could be complicated in a modern society and may not always benefit the fundamental interests of the majority of the people. If the development is not sustainable, it could be destructive rather than constructive.

A survey conducted by the State Environmental Protection Administration shows that among the 7,555 chemical or petroleum projects in China, 81 percent are located in environment sensitive areas, such as water networks or densely populated habitats. While these projects have contributed economic profits to the national gross product (GDP), they also created pollution that seriously affected people's life. For instance, at the 500 sections of China's nine major river systems that are monitored for water quality, only 28 percent have water suitable for drinking, while 31 percent have water quality with limited or no functional use.

Pollution has aggravated shortage of water supply in the water scarce north and incurred water famines in the water affluent south. According to the State

Environmental Protection Administration, China now faces intensive outbreaks of water pollution incidents as a consequence of negligence of environmental protection over the past decades, with reports of a water pollution incident every two or three days on average since the end of 2005. In the Pearl River Delta in Guangdong, where the volume of freshwater resources averages at 330 billion cubic meters a year, rapid economic growth since the 1980s has coupled with pollution to nearly every river course in the urban areas. The pollution has resulted in a water shortage affecting 16 million people of the province. Nationwide, more than 300million people's drinking water security is not guaranteed.

Such destructive development certainly would hold human rights at stake.