| From the very beginning of the mankind’s history, land has always been an essential topic of the human society. Comparatively speaking, the concepts of land property rights in China in the19th Century were closer to those of land property rights under the common law system in U.K. and U.S., rather than those of land ownership under the civil law system. Through the comparison and studies of the legal regime of land property rights of both China and U.S., this Article may further think and help "China" in finding its own place from the perspective of "another country", which is taken as a mirror. In the meantime, observation and understanding of the legal regime of land property rights in China may also benefit the study, think and borrow of the legal regime of land property rights of "another country", i.e., U.S., and its civilization.Chapter I of this Article, from the perspectives of social form and development environment, introduces the difference of the legal regimes of land property rights developed under respective social environments of China, which was at the end of agricultural civilization, and U.S., which was at the beginning of federalism. This Chapter categorizes, by subject, the land property rights of the two countries into privately-owned, collectively-owned and state-owned, tries to study the concepts of land property rights in the legal regimes of the two countries, which are similar but not completely identical to each other, and at last, through the analysis of similarities and differences of the two countries’privatization ways, tries to look for a reasonable explanation thereof, with substantial differences derived from their societies and environments.Chapter Ⅱ of this Article, combining the theories of land property rights and the actual development of land property rights, comprehensively compares the similarities and differences of China and U.S.’s legal regimes of land property rights during the development thereof. U.S., learning from the property rights system of the U.K. and making appropriate improvements to the legislations according to the actual situation of its own society, categorizes the land property rights into four types, i.e., life estate, fee simple, fee tail and non-freehold, and has developed more detail sub-categories of rights under each of them. Taking into account that China at the same time has not established any systematic categorization of rights, this Chapter, when studying the legal regimes of land property rights in U.S., tries to analyze the land property rights in China by taking the corresponding seats in U.S., and concludes that, different from that in U.S., the land law system of China, at the same time when the phenomena of land privatization and multiple ownership segregation, still could not get rid of the limitation of the state’s or the clan’s ownership and failed to develop a sound system that was fit for the land market.Chapter III of this Article, from the perspective of determining the scope of land property rights, studies the laws and cases in connection with the ways to determine physical boundaries of land property rights, the systems to register and make publicly available the land property rights, and the remedies available when the land property rights are infringed in both China and U.S. From the comparison, we can see both the merits and demerits for U.S., as a brand new country, to establish a uniform legal regime of land property rights at the beginning of its foundation, and can also see both the advantages and problems of the right determination documents, the inherited land deeds system and the system of "fish scale books", which survived from the reforms of land property rights throughout all the dynasties of China, a country with a long history, and were called in various different names.Chapter IV of this Article discusses various different rights that derive from the land property rights in both China and U.S., including the relevant rights and interests such as the mineral rights, the air space rights, the water rights, the supporting rights, the easements and the fruits. In addition to the introduction of the development and difference of the land derivative rights of the two countries, this Chapter also tries to incorporate both the laws of land property rights of the two countries and the diverse legal theories and social and economic developments of the two countries in the19th Century, in order to analyze the underlying reasons of the development and difference of the systems of land derivative rights.Chapter V of this Article, as the conclusive part and the theoretical basis of this Article, discusses the paths along which the land property rights in China and U.S. were changed in the19th Century, affected by different social elements. In the19th Century, U.S. adopted the theory of mercantilism and thus applied the formal rationality of "absolute property" with respect to land property rights, and technically, the land property rights were less entangled or disturbed by political rights and a legal tradition to rule the society by law ensured that the land privatization could smoothly go on its wheel among different subjects of rights, while China adopted the theory of physiocracy and merchants and farmers did not have political rights, its legal tradition to rule the society by saint was still the main stream, and the land property rights were frequently disturbed by political powers, therefore, in the19th Century in China, though, in the private domain, the land property rights had partially experienced the process of "from status to contract", in the movements with respect to land property rights involving the issues of heritage, clans and inter-status transformation, the relevant contracts had performed very limited roles, so if we look into this issue with a more penetrating eye, the land property rights still failed to complete the process of "from status to contract" like what happened in U.S. Therefore the changes during the privatization of land property rights in China in the19th Century, which will be discussed in this Article, would include various different development trends and complicated directions such as "from status to status","from status to contract" and "from status to contract and to status again", while in U.S.,it was more clear that the changes during the privatization of land property rights in the19th Century were basically "from status to contract".
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