Rachel Hou / Shanghai Daily news

Committed to regulating the land market, the municipal government has taken back the use-right of 82 plots of land in the city, today's Youth Daily reported.
According to the city authority, local real estate developers own the use right of nearly 6,000 hectares of land. Since only 200 of the city's more than 4,800 developers are fully qualified, nearly 1000 hectares of land are yet to be developed. On the other hand, government-controlled land is very limited. One district government has only two square kilometers (0.772 square miles) of land at its disposal. To ease the situation, the city has launched several campaigns to reposes the use rights of idle land and has achieved great success this year.
Meanwhile, a new regulation to supervise the land market, will take effect from tomorrow. The regulation, issued this March by the country's land management authority, stipulates that public bidding will be adopted for land use rights from September 1st: In other words, the golden era for real estate developers, when government officials at all levels were entitled to approve land use rights, has come to an end.