Maryland Business

By: jackie.sauter

This week’s Forbes magazine has a great article by former Baltimore Sun reporter Gady Epstein about a developer in Chungqing, China, who thought he was going to benefit from the government’s seizure of prime land near a highway and commerce center. He ended up losing out, as a government official showed favoritism to another developer, seized his land, and eventually denied him about 75 percent of the compensation that he, and the courts, thought he deserved.Why does this sound familiar to me?

Oh yeah — because Chen Yun, the real estate developer in question, could be any number of Baltimore landowners who have lost their property to the city or seen it conveyed to another private interest, and been, in their opinion, unjustly compensated. In fact, we wrote a three-part series about that very subject last month.

We already know that China, and Chongqing in particular, has a miserable record on property rights — but what a strange coincidence that reporters who have worked in Baltimore are still poking at the same types of stories, even in China. At least we have one thing in common!

ROBBIE WHELAN, Business Writer