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jmyeetyesterday at 9:13 PM0 repliesview on HN

This is misleading, arguably false.

All land in China is state-owned. You own the building. You don't own the land the building is on. In this way, it's really no different to leasehold in the UK or land-lease in NYC. Do we say that all these UK leaseholders don't really "own" a house? Is there the same fearmongering?

And in the UK, it's often the Royal Family or some aristocratic landholder who owns the land (eg the Duke of Westminster owns an awful lot of London land) whereas in China, the lease renewal is essentially automatic and there's no property tax or land lease that gets paid.

It's also worth adding you never really truly own property anywhere. The government is free to change their mind at any time. And they do. All the time eg eminent domain.