With massive growth taking place in the real estate industry, how can China develop a free market and private ownership of land while still officially subscribing to Communist ideology? This study uses fieldwork interviews to establish how the Chinese real estate market operates in practice from both legal and business perspectives. It describes how the market functions, which laws are applicable and how they are applied, and how a nation can achieve dramatic economic growth so rapidly while its legal system is so unsettled. The book demonstrates how China is drawing on the world for ideas while retaining a domestic system that remains essentially Chinese, and how the recent revitalization of China's real estate market has confounded the predictions of many developments economists.

The book addresses the issues of China's modern social order, as influenced by an evolving economic order and especially legal order. Ongoing Chinese modernisation is prompted by both domestic needs and WTO commitments, which includes both economic and legal reforms. Emphasis is placed on legal reforms, one of the most important areas of much needed reforms. The directional development of China's legal order has national, interregional and international implications, which affect the growth and prosperity of both China and the world's economy. A problem is an evolving inter-relationship between social order, economic order, and legal order, which can be described as either complementary or paradoxical. However, a paradoxical inter-relationship between these sources of order is problematic, because it effectively renders needed legal reforms that are increasingly more difficult to implement. This book explores both the complementary and paradoxical inter-relationship between these sources of order, the author proposes a "novel" and "viable" alternative for transplanting a more Western constitutional design in China.

This text traces the fundamental reforms in real estate that have brought about China's transition to a market economy. Among the areas covered by this work are public ownership and private property, market development with planning control, land and housing registration, state requisition of land and housing, and law for land and building development.