The Legal Nature Of The Behavior Of Public Welfare Forest In China And The Protection Of Civil Rights

Public welfare forests are of great significance in protecting ecologicalenvironment, strengthening national defense and promoting scientific experiments.However, once a forest is delimited as a public welfare forest, logging is strictlyprohibited and any management can’t be carried on. This extreme constraint toforestry rights causes serious infringement towards legitimate rights and interests offorestry subjects.To solve the problem, this article introduces the theory of regulatory taking andanalyzes the legal nature of delimiting public welfare forests. At present, Chinesegovernment delimits public welfare forests through issuing decrees instead of formalexpropriation procedures. This, however, causes deprivation of rights. Therefor, thisarticle argues that the delimiting is in accordance with the characteristics of regulatorytaking. Considering the civil rights involved, this article proposes reasonablesuggestions for protecting the civil rights of forestry subjects.This article consists of seven parts:By introducing Shi GuangYin case, the firstpart puts forward relevant problems: what is legal nature of delimiting public welfareforests? How to protect legal rights of forestry subjects in this process?The second part introduces research and practice related to Chinese publicwelfare forests, with focus on three theories about delimiting: theory of expropriation,theory of properties limiting, and theory of regulatory taking.The third part focuses on the system of regulatory taking. It firstly elaboratesemerging and development of the system in America and Germany. Then itsummarizes the concept and characteristics of regulatory taking.The fourth part analyzes legal nature of delimiting. It refutes theory ofexpropriation and theory of properties limiting, concluding that delimiting publicwelfare forests is regulatory taking based on the concept and characteristics above.The fifth part enumerates the civil rights of forestry subjects involved indelimiting.The sixth part puts forward suggestions of how to protect civil rights of forestrysubjects from three aspects: procedural rights beforehand, litigious rights afterwards,and compensation system.The seventh part summarizes the article.