Property Law of the People's Republic of China

The law was a property law adopted by the fifth session of the 10th National People's Congress on March 16, 2007 that went into effect on October 1, 2007. The law covers the creation, transfer, and ownership of property in the mainland of the People's Republic of China (PRC) and was part of an ongoing effort by the PRC to gradually develop a civil code. It contained all aspects of property law in the PRC's legal system.

The law was drafted quite differently from the usual legislative process in the PRC where laws are drafted behind closed doors, over 14,000 public submissions were considered for over a decade before the law was adopted and put into effect. In developing civil law in the PRC mainland, the PRC government has used the German Pandectist system of classification under which the property law corresponds to the law on real rights, which is the term used in Chinese for the official name of the law. The Property Law was formally repealed by the Civil Code in 2021.

Passage

The drafting of the law involved considerable controversy. The proposed bill caused quite a stir since it was first published in 2002, was subsequently deferred. Over 14,000 public submissions were considered for over a decade before the law was adopted and put into effect. The draft was released online for public comment after the bill’s third review in July 2005.

Many in the Chinese legal community feared that creating a single law to cover both state property and private property would facilitate privatization and asset stripping of state-owned enterprises. The draft law was subject to a constitutional challenge. Legal scholars, notably Gong Xiantian of Peking University, argued that it violated the constitutional characterization of the PRC as a socialist state. Gong called for a complete halt to the legislative process, arguing that by granting equal protection to public and private property, the draft unconstitutionally "departed from basic socialist principles". The law was originally scheduled to be adopted in 2005 but was removed from the legislative agenda following these objections. The final form of the law contains a number of additions to address these objections.

It yet again failed in its reading at the fourth session of the 10th National People's Congress in 2006 because of disputes over its content. Before the bill's seventh review, NPC Standing Committee Chairman Wu Bangguo defended the constitutionality of the bill at a meeting of the NPCSC's Party members, including the provision affording equal protection to private property, at a meeting of the NPCSC’s Communist Party members. The bill finally went through its eighth reading in 2007. Wu's remarks were substantially incorporated into the bill’s official explanation presented to NPC delegates at the start of the eight review.

On March 8, 2007, the Property Law was formally introduced at the NPC. Vice Chairman Wang Zhaoguo told the Congress that the law will "safeguard the fundamental interests of the people", and the law is an attempt at adapting to new "economic and social realities" in China. The law was adopted on March 16, the final day of the two-week session of congress, with the backing of 96.9% of the 2,889 legislators attending, with 2,799 for, 52 against, and 37 abstentions. In his final address to the 2007 Session, Chairman Wu Bangguo declared "the Private Property Law and the Corporate Taxation law are two of the most important laws in the new economic system of Socialism with Chinese characteristics, we must attempt to learn these laws fully through various methods."