Chinese land reform has managed to maintain and disintegrate state and collective land ownership simultaneously by discarding the unitary conception of ownership. It is consistent with the idea that “property comprises a complex aggregate of social and legal relationships” (Heller 1999:1191) rather than being “the simple and nonsocial relation between a person and a thing” (Alexander 1997:321). Scholars disagree about whether property rights are in personam rights or in rem rights. Traditionally, the in rem nature of property was widely recognized.