Chinese land reform:property rights and land use

Abstract: Is China’s “property rights” legislation, which distinguishes transferable “property rights” and inalienable “land ownership”, a new concept that is unknown before, or a pragmatic reversion to the individual property rights system abolished by the communist revolution? This study claims that the latter is a better exposition. As part of a “socialist market economy”, such a reversion is manifested in the legal recognition of the leasehold tenure after the “responsibility system” in agricultural production had proved to be successful. As the development of private property rights is a prelude to market transactions, land use rights reform in China should be conducive to the success of China’s economic liberalization policies, provided that there is a contemporaneous advance in the development of the polices and technical know-how, such as new land use right policy and land surveying.