Chinese couple bows to developer's bulldozers

BEIJING (Reuters) - A Chinese couple has ended a three-year standoff with a developer seeking to relocate them to make way for a mall, a struggle that catapulted them to celebrities as symbols of resistance to breakneck development.

The bulldozers moved in just moments after Wu Ping and Yang Wu moved out of their two-storey brick home in the southwestern city of Chongqing, Xinhua news agency reported.

The house had stood isolated on an earthen mound in the middle of a huge, 10-metre-deep pit where their neighbours' homes once stood.

Their bowing to the bulldozers and the inevitable drew mournful comments from Internet commentators who had championed them as rebels defending fragile housing rights.

"Victims of removal all seem to suffer unfair treatment," wrote Qiu Feng, author of a popular Blog. "In the face of government ownership of urban land, they lack the power to challenge." Other Web sites showed photos of the solitary house being razed.

The couple had rejected the developer's compensation offers, instead demanding 5 million yuan (327,000 pounds) and a house of the same size, same height and same exposure as their old one, reports said. Such a payment would represent a small fortune in a poor country where demolition crews rarely slow for anyone.

In the end, Xinhua reported, Wu and Yang had accepted an apartment of the same size as their demolished one. The agency did not say if the developer had also agreed to a cash payment.

On March 30, a court had ordered them to leave by next week or face forcible removal.

Media reports had referred to the home as a "nail house" that would not be flattened by hammer-like development, but also echoing a term used to describe stubborn troublemakers.