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Chinese Man Steals a Road and Sells It

When you say “someone stole a road,” one might think that means the guy in question pulled some strings, faked some papers, worked some magic and voila! the road is theirs to do as they please. Stealing a road seems to be taken more literally in China, apparently.
800 meters of a stolen road in China 2 photos
Photo: Channel News Asia
Stolen road in China
An 800-meters long stretch of road (0.5 miles) linking the village of Sankeshu in Jiangsu province to some other town in the area disappeared over night, leaving the residents to marvel at the authorities sudden desire to renovate their road.

Authorities, on the other hand, had no renovation planned, nor did they have any idea where the road went. So they started investigating. Not long after that, they found the culprit: a local man, hell-bent on making some bucks no matter what.

According to the police report, cited by Channel News Asia, the man hired a digger to rip the road apart and then took the concrete pieces to a nearby factory, when he sold the 500 tons of asphalt for about $800. We're not sure how much he paid to hire the digger.

When confronted with the evidence, the man said he thought stealing and selling the concrete slabs would be a good deal for all parties involved, given the fact that the road is seldom used by residents. That is because a new road opened elsewhere in the region, and nobody was using the old one, apparently.

"No one was taking the road. Why don't I dig it up, and I can sell the cement pieces for some money," he reportedly said.

It's not clear what punishment if any, authorities have in mind for the wannabe entrepreneur. Equally unclear is why somebody would buy slabs of concrete of unknown origin.

We're not even sure the Criminal Law of the People's Republic of China has any provisions for such an offense.
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About the author: Daniel Patrascu
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Daniel loves writing (or so he claims), and he uses this skill to offer readers a "behind the scenes" look at the automotive industry. He also enjoys talking about space exploration and robots, because in his view the only way forward for humanity is away from this planet, in metal bodies.
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