Professor Tom Simmons is contributing to the collection development effort of the USD Law Library. Under a recently adopted program, professors make recommendations for titles to be added to the Law Library collection. Consistent with the Collection Development Policy of the Law Library, titles recommended for acquisition by the faculty are given priority consideration. If the recommended title is acquired, the faculty member provides a brief review of the title for publication on the Law Library Blog.
Below Professor Simmons provides the third review for a title acquired under the new program. Thank you Professor Simmons!
Gregory M. Stein, Modern Chinese Real Estate Law: Property Development in an Evolving Legal System (Surrey, England: Ashgate Publishing Ltd. 2012)
Professor Gregory M. Stein, the author of Modern Chinese Real Estate Law: Property Development in an Evolving Legal System (Surrey, England: Ashgate Publishing Ltd. 2012), is an Associate Dean at the Tennessee College of Law where he teaches courses in advanced property, commercial real estate and land use law. In 2003, he was a visiting Fulbright Professor of Law at Shanghai Jiaotong University. He returned four more times. Those experiences led to this book.
Unlike the existing books on Chinese property law, Professor Stein’s text is lively, cogent, and up-to-date. He attempts to offer a “detailed account of how the Chinese real estate market actually operates in practice.” (6) The actual printed law of property in China is skeletal. Professor Stein describes how the system manages with so few written laws and sets out to explain “how the actors in the world’s most explosive real estate market actually function.” (11)
In Modern Chinese Real Estate Law, the author succeeds in imparting a sense of wonder at the explosion of commercial transactions on so flimsy a legal framework which seems to run counter to the accepted Western thinking that sees an established rule of law as a necessary precondition to economic vitality. At the same time, Professor Stein introduces the basic components of Chinese real estate law, from land use rights, real estate development entities, development issues and banking/financing.
Unfortunately, Professor Stein spends little time on takings, residential leaseholds or title registration, yet his book is an important one and deserving of a wide readership given the importance and unique history that China represents.
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