The administration is working together with its Chaoyang District Branch, other concerned departments and legal experts to study and collect evidence on whether the company's businesses are legitimate, the Beijing News reported on Thursday. The Beijing Municipal Administration of Industry and Commerce has stepped into the probe of a local company, registered early last month, claiming to sell land on moon.

The administration is working together with its Chaoyang District Branch, other concerned departments and legal experts to study and collect evidence on whether the company's businesses are legitimate, the Beijing News reported on Thursday.

The Beijing Municipal Administration of Industry and Commerce has stepped into the probe of a local company, registered early last month, claiming to sell land on moon.

The administration is working together with its Chaoyang District Branch, other concerned departments and legal experts to study and collect evidence on whether the company's businesses are legitimate, the Beijing News reported on Thursday.

The Beijing Municipal Administration of Industry and Commerce has stepped into the probe of a local company, registered early last month, claiming to sell land on moon.

The administration is working together with its Chaoyang District Branch, other concerned departments and legal experts to study and collect evidence on whether the company's businesses are legitimate, the Beijing News reported on Thursday.

Staff with the municipal administration said that it is a kind of "special practice" to sell land on the moon and legal experts have different views.

The so-called Lunar Embassy in China, through which one can purchase an acre on the moon for 298 yuan (37 US dollars), started operation on Oct. 19.

The Lunar Embassy will issue customers a "certificate" that ensures property ownership including rights to use the land and minerals up to three kilometers underground, Li Jie, chief executive officer of the company was quoted as saying by the China Daily several days ago.

"We define it as a kind of novelty gift with the potential of unlimited increase in value," said Li, who was nominated as the agent in China by Dennis Hope, a US entrepreneur who founded the first extraterrestrial estate agency Lunar Embassy in 1980, 11 years after the Apollo II mission first landed people on the moon.

Hope thinks a loophole in the 1967 UN Outer Space Treaty which forbids governments from owning extraterrestrial property but fails to mention corporations or individuals.

"I have 3.5 million customers including ex-US presidents Ronald Reagan, Jimmy Carter and movie stars who have purchased land on the moon," Hope was quoted by the China Daily as saying.

And there appears to be at least some moonstruck people in China. According to Li, with the Lunar Embassy in China, several hundreds telephone orders were received in the past few days.

At the same time, not all believe that the trading is legal and some even regard it as fraud or a joke.

"It's ridiculous! The moon belongs to the whole mankind and how can a company sell it," said a man surnamed Xu, who works at a media group in Beijing.