ABSTRACT
The most comprehensive discussion of the land registration process in China in the 1930s may be found in the annual report of the Ministry of the Interior in 1936. The experience of Jiangxi shows the constraints under which the Republican government worked in implementing land registration. The Jiangxi provincial government was attracted to the yitu arrangement because essentially it passed the cost of collection to the private sector. By 1935, when the cadastral record was completed, on order of the provincial government, the Nanchang county government ceased to charge a fee on the registration of deeds, but, instead, certified ownership that was indicated in the cadastral record. Although the Land Law provided the framework for compiling a cadastral record, it did not reform land ownership. A case can readily be made that between the drafting process and the creation of the law, the central government's need for revenue overrode its reformist intentions.
