New Registration Measures Provide Clarity for China Land Owners

The Land Registration Measures (Measures), which come into effect on July 1 2008, are, in fact, the implementation rules of the relevant provisions under the Property Law. Thus, the Measures should be considered together with the existing PRC Property Law(中华人民共和国物权法).

In the past Chinese law has viewed land and the interests in buildings on that land as separate items of ownership. Thus, under the current Land Registration Rules issued by the previous State Land Management Bureau in 1995, there are separate registration systems in place. In most areas this means that registrations for land and buildings requires two separate registration procedures at separate municipal authorities, resulting in widespread confusion, disputes and even illegal property transfers.

To rectify this, Article 75 of the Measures mandates that the registration of both the land and building interests should be managed by one uniform governmental authority at local level. Ironically, under the Housing Registration Measures, to become effective on July 1 2008, the Ministry of Construction (MOC) which is now the Ministry of Housing and Urban-Rural Construction and its local counterparts (i.e. construction commissions or bureaus) will be in charge of the registration of buildings. Thus, it is uncertain whether consolidation of the separate registration systems can actually be realized efficiently as it will require merging of overlapping responsibilities from two separate government bodies.