this post was submitted on 18 May 2026
61 points (95.5% liked)

China, 中国

1180 readers
18 users here now

English

This is a forum dedicated to China, Chinese culture Chinese language, and Chinese people.

Our Matrix chat

Rules:

中文

这是一个专门讨论中国、中国文化、中国语言和中国人的论坛。

我们在 Matrix 的聊天室

规则:


Related communities / 相关的互联网论坛


Community icon by CustomDesign on MYICONFINDER, licensed under CC BY-NC 3.0

founded 6 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] cfgaussian@lemmygrad.ml 2 points 2 weeks ago

Literally the same thing. All land in every country is owned by the government of that country. That's what being a sovereign state means. If you stop paying your land (property) taxes the government can take it away from you. That is literally a lease.

If the government needs that land for a purpose it deems sufficiently important (such as building a military base), they can and will take it away from you with eminent domain. If a state does not exercise control over its own land, it is not sovereign.

China simply explicitly recognizes this basic fact about the nature of statehood and land.

However, unlike in the "democratic" West, there is no land tax in China. You just pay a fee when you "lease" the land. You can lease it for essentially your entire life. And the lease can be easily renewed when it expires for far less than you pay in land taxes.

There is no practical difference between this and western "ownership". The difference is purely semantic.