A new amendment to China's Constitution designed to protect private property has been hailed by most people. Not everyone, however, is happy.

　　Among those who aren't thrilled are villagers of Nanjie, one of a few rich villages that has no plans to abandon its collective economy.

　　The village is in central China's Henan Province.

　　The clause, "the state will respect and protect citizens' legally obtained private property," was added to the Constitution by China's top legislature on March 14.

　　However, the concept of "private property" is so vague to Nanjie villagers.

　　This is not because they are poor.

　　The village's 13,000 citizens earn a yearly wage of 3,000 yuan (US$360) and are entitled to free meals, housing, medical care and education, compared with the national average of 2,622 yuan per year and no additional benefits for most others.

　　The collective economy system, practiced for more than 30 years in China's countryside, has been replaced by a system of "contracted responsibility linking remuneration to output."

　　Yet the new system has not reached Nanjie, whose homes and factories are decorated with commandments and slogans hailing unselfishness and communal living.

　　Although collective assets have soared more than 2,100 times from 20 years ago to the current 1.4 billion-plus yuan, private property owned by villagers is negligible.

　　"We have little private property here," said Lei Dequan, 48, deputy director of the village committee of the Communist Party of China.

　　In nanjie, from the village leader to the factory worker to the peasant tilling the fields, every permanent resident gets the same take-home pay.

　　Housing, health care and tuition from nursery to university are free. So are electricity, water, gas, contraceptives, newspapers, magazines, entertainment, cooking oil, flour, eggs and beer.

　　"Too much private property will lure people to do evil," said Wang Jie, a Nanjie villager who lives in one of many apartments uniformly distributed by the village collective.

　　Wang said he once turned over to the collective his bonus of 1,500 yuan without any hesitation. The bonus was used for technological advancement.

　　Wang admitted his view on private property rights is the result of years of education by the village.

　　"My ideas would probably change were I now living in Guangzhou or Shenzhen," he said, referring to two major cities in southern China's Guangdong Province that spearheaded China's reform and opening-up drive since the late 1970s.

　　Among the few who are happy with the constitutional amendment is Yang Jinchao, a returned student from Australia who manages a collectively owned beer factory in the village.

　　(Xinhua)