Guangming Daily:

One of the major changes in China's society over the past decade is the realization of unified registration of immovable property, which concerns numerous households. What progress has been made in institutional development in this regard? What new measures have been adopted in the areas that people are concerned about, such as shortening the time required for registration and providing more convenient services? Thank you.

Liu Guohong:

Thank you for your question. Establishing the unified registration system for immovable property and integrating responsibilities of registration of immovable property are major decisions and plans made by the CPC Central Committee and the State Council. Over the past decade, setting one goal a year and advancing step by step, we have successfully accomplished the reform of unified registration of immovable property and continuously improved the quality, level, and efficiency of registration services, effectively protecting the property rights of enterprises and the people and ensuring the security of immovable property transactions. It can be said that the work has served all walks of life and benefited numerous households, mainly reflected in three aspects.

First, the unified registration system for immovable property has been established and put into practice, with the goal achieved as scheduled. I would like to brief you about the work we have done in recent years. In 2013, the CPC Central Committee and the State Council made the decision to launch the reform of the unified registration system for immovable property. In 2014, the Provisional Regulations on the Registration of Immovable Property was promulgated. In 2015, the integration of responsibilities and agencies for the registration of immovable property in China was completed. In 2016, the initiative of issuing new immovable property registration certificates and suspending old ones was completed. In 2017, all the registration agencies at city and county levels were included on the national registration information platform. It took five years for us to achieve the goal of reform for unification in four aspects, including registration agencies, registration bases, registration books, and the registration information platforms. 

Second, the quality, level, and efficiency of registration services have been improved to facilitate the registration of people and enterprises. We have implemented information integration, process integration or personnel integration, simplified application materials and procedures, and continued to reduce the time required for immovable property registration. We have promoted services to facilitate and benefit people, and provided "single-window and inter-agency services" for registration, transaction, and taxation of immovable property, and "Internet Plus Immovable Property Registration." At present, all cities and counties have basically realized five-day processing of general registration and mortgage registration.

Third, practical measures have been taken to resolve the most pressing difficulties and problems that are of great concern to the people to enhance their sense of fulfillment. We have continued to promote localities to resolve difficulties in registration caused by longstanding issues, with a large number of people receiving property ownership certificates. We have planned and launched trials for cleaning up longstanding issues in regulating the determination and registration of forest tenure. Guided under the principles of respecting history and seeking truth from facts, we have taken steady steps to resolve longstanding issues in forest tenure registration. We have completed the immovable property registration of the resettlement housing for people relocated from inhospitable areas. By the end of June 2021, about 2.58 million resettlement houses for registered poor households had completed immovable property registration.

In the next step, we will continue to implement the people-centered development philosophy and make great efforts to improve the conduct of the ranks of the registration of immovable property according to the deployments of deepening reforms to streamline administration, delegate powers, improve regulation, strengthen services, and improve the business environment, which were deployed by the CPC Central Committee and the State Council. We have continuously improved the convenience of registering immovable property to make it give full play to its important role in protecting property rights, guaranteeing transactions, and serving the interests of the people and enterprises. Thank you.