Ownership of Land in China

It looks complicated. it seems like the state owns the land (and the rights to minerals under it) but regional, county and city governments can sell "land use rights" which seem to be like leases. Once you buy the use rights on a piece of land you have to register them officially with a public notary and you then have legal protection. You are allowed to possess, use, make a profit from, or dispose of the land use rights and any buildings or plant which you may have erected.

centrox-

Thank you.

(I read some time ago that all land in China is owned by the government. Then I read recently of wealthy Chinese persons with real estate fortunes. I was trying to reconcile the two facts.)

(Also, the political economist Henry George wrote about the same phenomenon in 1879 in his classic book "Progress and Poverty." He recognized that increases in population and in economic activity would increase the price of land, giving landholders a huge capital gain while making housing unduly expensive for most of the public.

George devised a plan to solve the problem. He proposed a land tax of sufficient size to transfer the profit generated by popular demand for a limited supply of land from the landlord to the public treasury.

In 1886 he ran as a candidate for mayor of New York City in which post he hoped to implement his his plan. Unfortunately he lost to the corrupt Tammany Hall candidate. Theodore Roosevelt, the future president, came in third.

It is not too late. We can still enact George's program and thereby provide for public needs while lowering or eliminating taxation on non-land owners.)