As a by-product of highly socialized land ownership, the right to use housing sites in rural China had been endowed as a kind of welfare. Accordingly, the rights of residents had been strictly restricted, especially the collateral use and transfer to urban residents had been prohibited repeatedly. However, confronted with long stagnation and poverty in rural area, party-state authorities began to seek measures to use rural homestead as “real”property. Although the trials were too “sensitive” and “prudent” to put the result into Civil Law, it seems that leasing and mortgage are the most probable measures to be adopted, at least at this stage.
