China’s vast private wealth makes inheritance tax increasingly hard to avoid. Greater security over residential land-use rights could help break the political deadlock.

China’s massive level of accumulated wealth is a primary reason why the lack of an inheritance tax in China is back in the news. The Economist recently investigated this prominent flaw in China’s tax regime in an article entitled: China is wrestling with a novel phenomenon: inherited wealth. Draft regimes were proposed several times in the past but never applied.

The nominal GDP of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) was approximately US$216 billion in 1978. By 2025 was it around US $18.7 trillion. These figures indicate a raw, 86-fold expansion of China’s economy over this period. According to CSIS, a leading US think tank, China has become the world’s largest economy measured by Purchasing Power Parity (PPP).

One remarkable consequence is the prodigious growth in individually held assets in China over the last several decades. A great deal of this privately held wealth comprises urban and regional real estate, where residential premises dominate.

According to the 2026 world population review, there are over 520 million households in China accommodating 1.4 billion people. CNN recently confirmed that around 90 per cent of these households are privately owned.

By 2016, Savills said the Chinese real estate market, valued at US$42.7 trillion, was the largest in the world, ahead of the US. This figure has since increased.

A widely established, basic ownership distinction is drawn between freehold title and leasehold title to land. Briefly, freehold title grants a right of complete, indefinite ownership of land........

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