With its property prices fluctuating wildly, Shanghai has been designated as a testing ground for a more centralized, and hopefully more effective, vertical land administration system.

This was one of a series of moves, taken last week by central government agencies, to further regulate the land and housing market. It follows public complaints of rising housing prices in major cities and shady deals in the real estate market. 
 
The Ministry of Land and Resources last week pledged that it will rebuild its administrative system according to the central bank model, namely by setting up a certain number of regional bureaus (nine in the ministry's case) reporting directly to its central office in Beijing.

At the same time, the Ministry of Construction, another key regulator of the land and real estate market, openly reprimanded 10 land developers and related firms for their attempts to defy industry rules.

The central government urged all cities, from medium-sized to major ones, to turn over their housing development programmes before the end of the year, as was required in the middle of the year.

Starting from January 2007, according to a central government decision also adopted last week, inspection teams will be dispatched nationwide to evaluate the implementation of current policies.

In the case of the Ministry of Land and Resources, the other eight bureaus to be established will be in Beijing, Shenyang, Nanjing, Jinan, Guangzhou, Wuhan, Chengdu and Xi'an. They will form a nationwide regulatory network with Shanghai.

The ministry's Shanghai bureau is commissioned to oversee land issues in Shanghai, along with those in Zhejiang and Fujian provinces, with an emphasis on Ningbo and Xiamen, two coastal cities which have also seen rapid housing price rises.

But setting up all nine regional bureaus will be, according to a ministry official who did not want to be named, "a gradual process." There is no need, he told China Daily, to set up all of them at one time.

Source:佚名