Constitutional Amendment And Perfection Of The Development Environment Of China'S Asset Appraisal Industry

In March 14, 2004, the second session of the Tenth National People's Congress passed the amendment to the constitution of the People's Republic of China, with a total of 14 articles, about 2000 words.

The revision of the constitution is a major event in the political and economic life of our country, and will have a positive impact on all areas of social and economic life in China.

From the perspective of the asset appraisal industry, we should also realize that the revision of the constitution will play an active role in improving the development environment of the asset appraisal industry, thus playing a great role in promoting the asset appraisal industry.

In view of the experience of various countries in the development of appraisal industry, the legal system, especially the perfect property rights protection system, plays a vital role in the development of the assessment industry. Many laws require direct or indirect assessment of professional services.

In China and some developing countries, quite a lot of evaluation businesses are directly based on the mandatory requirements of the law. For example, mandatory subjects are required to conduct assessments when conducting certain economic activities.

Therefore, many people mistakenly believe that this is a common phenomenon in the development of assessment industry in various countries.

The development of assessment industry in western countries is very different. The evaluation business is mostly spontaneous, that is, the parties are mostly based on their own needs to assess, not mandatory by law.

There are many reasons for this discrepancy. When we analyze these differences, we find that the perfect legal system, especially the full protection of citizens' property, is one of the important factors to form this difference, and it is also an important factor that can form this kind of spontaneous assessment demand.

Due to strict legal protection, any behavior that damages citizens' property and interests will be restricted and sanctioned by law. One important embodiment is that the injured party should be fully and reasonably compensated. This requires a reasonable assessment of the value of the damage and so on, resulting in a steady stream of demand for asset assessment services.

Therefore, when studying the development of foreign appraisal industry, it is easy to find that a perfect civil property protection legal system is an important foundation for promoting and stabilizing the development of assessment industry in various countries.

The assessment needs of citizens and related organizations formed by the need to safeguard their legitimate rights and interests are truly effective and long-term needs. It is this spontaneous demand that drives the assessment industry in western countries to grow and expand over the past more than 100 years.

In the past, when assessing the exchange with the United States, because of the influence of inertial thinking in China, one of the questions frequently asked by domestic appraisers is whether there is any specific legislative or legal basis for the US asset appraisal industry.

The so-called special legislation or legal basis, the domestic assessment of the subconscious refers to whether there is any legal requirement in what kind of behavior must be assessed.

The answer is always negative. Although there are some provisions related to evaluation in federal financial laws and relevant laws of the States, there is no special assessment law in the United States to make similar provisions. As mentioned above, most of the assessment businesses are based on the spontaneous needs of individuals or economic organizations.

However, a senior American appraiser once told me that the US assessment industry has its deep legal foundation, that is, the constitution of the United States.

In order to ensure that the private property of citizens is not infringed, the fifth article of the amendment to the constitution of the United States clearly stipulates that any property (property) shall not be deprived without proper legal procedure (due process of law); any private property is not expropriated on the grounds of public interest without reasonable compensation (just compensation).

In Anglo American law, under the premise of reasonable compensation, the government's right to expropriate personal property for public interest is called eminent domain.

In the process of expropriation and compensation, because there are conflicting interests among the stakeholders, there is a different understanding of the value of the expropriated property. It is very difficult to reach agreement on what is reasonable compensation.

Under such circumstances, in order to achieve reasonable compensation, it is often necessary to assess the value of the property being expropriated and the loss to the litigants in a fair and objective way from the independent and objective point of view.

On this basis, the amount of compensation for the requisitioned person is determined.

If the parties still have objection to this, they may bring a lawsuit to the court. The judge will make a final ruling based on the pleading of the requisitioned parties and the appraiser (one or both parties).

The senior assessor seriously pointed out to me that although the constitutional amendment is not directly related to the assessment, it has a profound impact on the assessment industry, so it can be regarded as the most important assessment law in the United States.

It is based on the constitutional spirit of this reasonable compensation that the US legal profession, the economic community and the public have been discussing for a long time about what is reasonable compensation. The American assessment industry has also done a lot of research and practice.

It can be said that many businesses in the American appraisal industry are regulated and created by the spirit of the constitution, and the constitutional spirit of reasonable compensation and numerous precedents also promote the development of evaluation theory (such as the concept of market value) in a certain sense.

Because of the special national conditions of our country, the asset appraisal industry started from the end of the 1980s in China, and launched a deep state-owned asset management and mandatory brand.

For a long time, the objects of the assets appraisal industry are basically state-owned enterprises.

To a certain extent, we can say that the rapid development of asset appraisal in China's emergence and even after ten years is based on the need to safeguard the interests of state assets.

Asset appraisal is generally regarded as one of the means of state-owned assets management. Asset appraisal is not recognized as a basic attribute of intermediary service industry's sociality and independence.

Some time ago, some departments and scholars have pointed out that asset appraisal does not have a long-term development basis in our country. With the gradual reform of state-owned assets management system and the diversification of ownership forms, the demand for asset assessment will decrease.

This statement is obviously not objective and incomplete, but we should also realize that the reason why this view can be generated is that China has long positioned asset appraisal as one of the tools of state-owned assets management, ignoring that asset appraisal as an intermediary industry can not only serve the owners of state-owned assets, but also serve various types of owners and the public.

On the other hand, there are still some imperfections in China's legal system construction, and some typical cases of inadequate protection of citizens' property have also appeared in some localities.

Although in some laws and administrative regulations, citizens' compensation and other matters have been stipulated, they often fail to fully protect their legitimate rights and interests because of their low efficiency and incomplete provisions, and the difficulty of determining the amount of compensation in the process of litigation.

According to CCTV, an electric power company has not been compensated for setting up poles in the fields where farmers have contracted for a long time.

After long-term litigation efforts of farmers, the court of second instance decided that the peasants would win the lawsuit, and the power company should compensate the farmers for the losses.

However, there was a problem in how to reasonably determine the amount of compensation. Finally, according to an internal document, the judge decided that the power company should pay more than 1000 yuan according to the calculation method of 1 telephone poles covering 3 square meters and 4 pole poles occupying 12 square meters.

It can be seen from this case that due to the lack of a reasonable amount of compensation, the protection of the infringed law is very weak. In a sense, it even indirectly encourages the infringer, so that the victory of peasants has no substantive significance besides symbolic significance.

Therefore, based on the need of fair principle, we need independent and objective asset appraisal services in a large number of judicial, administrative and civil actions in China to protect the legitimate rights and interests of all parties.

The amendment to this constitution has answered the above questions well. The revised constitution provides the following tenth provisions:

In order to meet the needs of the public interest, the state may impose or expropriate the land and give compensation in accordance with the law.

Thirteenth citizens' legitimate private property is inviolable.

The state protects the private property rights and inheritance rights of citizens in accordance with the law.

In order to meet the needs of the public interest, the state can impose or expropriate citizens' private property in accordance with the law.

The above provisions are one of the main contents of the revision of the constitution, which is of great significance, reflecting the inevitable demand for the development of China's socialist market economy, and stipulates the protection of citizens' private property from the height of the constitution, which will greatly improve our private property protection system.

The Constitution stipulates that compensation should be given to the state when requisitioned land or citizens' private property for the sake of public interest.

The direct significance of this provision is that it will certainly promote the rationalization of compensation actions of governments at all levels, and help to change various unreasonable phenomena appearing in the field of compensation in recent years.

The indirect meaning of this provision is that it embodies the spirit of protecting the private property rights of citizens. This spirit will be fully reflected in many civil and commercial law and judicial activities, and a reasonable protection of citizens' private property rights will be formed.

From the perspective of the assessment industry, with the perfection of the protection system of citizens' private property rights, there will inevitably be a spontaneous and long-term demand for the assessment of professional services, and the further development of the assessment industry will be promoted.

We believe that governments and judicial departments at all levels will pay more and more attention to the role of assessment in relevant economic activities in order to fully abide by the provisions of the Constitution and relevant laws in protecting citizens' property rights in the process of administration and law enforcement according to law.

China's assessment industry should also attach great importance to the opportunities brought about by the amendment of the Constitution and the improvement of the protection system of citizens' property rights, intensify the theoretical research on relevant assessment, improve the independence and professionalism of the assessment industry, and provide the proper services for the effective implementation of the legal system.