How to renew one's property rights and how much those rights should be worth is primarily being decided by local governments in both Wenzhou and Qingdao. Experts we have talked to say that to their knowledge, there are no similar cases in Shanghai. But the issue has a lot of people wondering what will happen when their 70-year land rights come up for renewal.

China began to commercialize residential property in the 1980s, leasing land to developers for residential purposes. Most of the land leases have a 70-year limit, though no one seems to know just why. Former Minister of Land and Resources Wang Xianjin once said in an interview that at first the government thought 50-year leases were long enough. The idea was that if a person bought a home at 30, a 50-year lease should be fair. Several years later this was re-evaluated and the cap raised to 70 years. Either way, although it will be some 40 years till the first major batch of commercial residence land rights expire, many are beginning to worry about perhaps needing to come up with a lot of money to extend them, just as the people in Wenzhou were told to do.

The situation was foreseen in the Property Law of the People's Republic of China. Clause 149 says that when a residential land lease expires, it will be extended automatically. Many authorities say the law is vague, however, and has more than a few loopholes. Also, the law was passed in 2007, but many local governments had already rolled out their local regulations before the law came into effect. Many are talking about possible ways for the government to solve the issue, and most believe it will somehow come down to residents having to pay when their lease expires.

Other experts suggest the government start to charge property taxes on land for which the leases expire. So far, however, the government has only been conducting limited experiments with property taxes.

No one really knows how the government will decide to handle the situation once the current leases expire. The problem is that the uncertainty will soon affect the value of apartments that people buy and sell. How can you sell an apartment, or buy one, if you can't begin to estimate what its value will be 40 or 50 years from now?

Many countries would not face this issue because their law treats land as private property, whereas in China all land is ultimately owned by the government. That makes it difficult for the government to levy property taxes, which in many other countries provide a substantial portion of local government income.