Chinese property law  Chinese property law has existed in various forms for centuries. After the Chinese Communist Revolution in 1949, most land is owned by collectivities or by the state; the Property Law of the People's Republic of China passed in 2007 codified property rights. Use of property are usually divided into topsoil (田皮) and subsoil (田骨) rights. Landlords paid taxes to the government in return for land-owning rights (known as subsoil rights), but did not have the right to actively use the land. The landlords in turn collents who used the land for agricultural purposes (topsoil rights). There are still on-going debates as to whether Imperial China had actual private property rights. Some argue that the imperial state had limited control over landed property, whereas others hold the view that imperial China acted as an all-controlling state. However, the bottom line was that the entire imperial era was seen as one of stagnation, during which "the system .. remain[ed] basically the same for the whole of imperial history". In fact, the property rights were not structured during imperial times. The Imperial times were time and space dependent and were affected by wars, rebellions and natural disaster. During such times, there were frequent shifts in ownership as abandoned land was reclaimed after former owners had fled or died. During the Qing Dynasty (1644-1911) some titling of land ownership did take place, albeit not systematically or at a national level, and historical titles have been handed down to the present. Newly accrued land along rivers, creeks and other waters – so-called riparian rights – was clearly designated as state property, and the Qing government repeatedly emphasized this in imperial edicts. During the rule of the Nationalist government (1912–1949), land tenure consisted on the one hand of communal and customary rights vested in landlords and nobles, religious institutions, and village communities, and on the other of statutory land rights grafted on to a German and Japanese civil law tradition. Under Nationalist rule, most forest was privately owned. Although the Communist government gradually worked towards the abolition of private ownership after they had gained power, private forest holdings continued to exist until the collectivization of the countryside. In the areas controlled by Communist forces traditional land tenure was broken up through Land Reform. In the 1930s Land Reform in the old revolutionary base areas, such as the Jiangxi Soviet and the Shaan-Gan-Ning Border Region, was carried out with the least possible social disruption.