Li's villa at Cuihu Villa Compound in Haidian district. Photo: Courtesy of Li Tianlong

An Indonesian businessman living in Beijing is to sue Haidian district's chengguan (city management officers) for issuing him with a notice to forcibly demolish some illegal constructions in his villa without following legal procedures.

But late last night, Haidian chengguan issued a statement confirming that they have not done anything inappropriate or illegal.

Li Tianlong, who is ethnically Chinese, owns a villa in Cuihu Villa Compound, Shangzhuang township in Haidian, said he received a notice from the district chengguan team last Friday, saying the two balconies, railings and see-through fence he built are illegal constructions, and will be forcibly demolished on September 1. His case was filed at Haidian district court house on Monday morning.

However, the notice didn't specify his name, Li said. "How was I supposed to make sure it comes from an official source if my name wasn't on it," he said, "plus I only have less than a week before the demolition." For fear that his wife and one-year-old daughter will be scared when seeing demolition enforcers, Li sent both of them to  Hong Kong on Sunday.

The "illegal constructions" were built in 2005 while he was decorating the house, one on the second floor of the villa and the other on the roof of his garage, covering 19 square meters in total, Li told the Global Times.

"I didn't know they were illegal, and I even paid the property management a cash pledge in case the property would be damaged during my construction," he said.

More than five years passed and Li and his family have been living with no complaints, until his assistant in China told him his villa received a demolition notice from the district chengguan on July 6.

Li was in Indonesia doing business, and did not return, because he thought it was not urgent as the notice did not specify his name, though it said the owner of the villa should remove the illegal constructions within 15 days or else they would use force.

"They never informed me of any legal rights I have, and how come both notices excluded the house owner's name?" He said his assistant went to the chengguan office last Wednesday and found a copy of his passport on their desk.

Haidian chengguan did not specify names in the notices because they failed to identify him after several notifications requiring a meeting with the owner did not work out, the statement said.

Describing the background to the case, the statement said Li reported his neighbor, Beijing billionaire Sun Yingui, for extending his villa illegally in August 2009. These extensions were later demolished by the chengguan in December 2009.

In reply, Sun also reported that Li had built illegal additions to his villa.

Cuihu Villa Compound is notorious for complaints about illegal constructions, said the statement, and it affects the overall planning and environment of the area.

The chengguan did not follow legal procedures, since the notices should have specified the names of the villa owners, and they did not issue a statement of the administrative penalty toward Li, which informs him of his legal rights to request an administrative reconsideration, said Wang Youyin, a lawyer who specializes in demolition cases.

"They [chengguan] must have taken foreigners as fools who know nothing about Chinese laws and don't understand Chinese," said Li.

Similar cases are common among ordinary Chinese people as well, as some chengguan officers fear that residents will also instigate court proceedings against them.