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intended to adopt in connection with the registration of land, and the amount of land tax that would be charged.
The procedure adopted in inquiring into and registering claims is as follows. The Assistant Land Oficer, having settled which sub-district is to be dealt with, issues a notice to the villages in such sub-district, informing the inhabitants that their claims must be sent in by a certain date, and distributes forms (see Appendix No. V) to be filled in, giving the owners of land to understand that such forms must be accompanied, whenever possible, by such title deeds as the claimants may possess.
In all cases of registration the landlords or their representatives and the tenants are required to bring their title deeds to the Land Office in person. The landlords in every case have to report the names of their tenants, and the latter, in addition to giving a detailed account of the land occupied by them, have to report the names of their landlords. The object of requiring a report from both landlords and tenants is to provide against false and fictitious claims and to save confusion.
Title deeds are of two classes, officially stamped deeds which have been re- gistered and stamped by the Chinese Magistrate of the San On District; private deeds which are not officially stamped and which are records of private sales only (see Appendix No. VIA.B.C.).
In many cases deeds have been lost or destroyed. When this happens, the claimants to the land are required to produce substantial proofs of their ownership, such as their rent roll, receipts from the Chinese Government for land tax, and other particulars pertinent to the land in question.
The claimants have to report the nature of the land, whether cultivated, fertile or otherwise, the kinds and number of crops it produces, the rent pail, &c. The object of this is to help the Land Officers in their classifications; and the informa- tion is important owing to the fact that the Crown rent charged varies according to the several classes of land.
Owners or occupiers report their land in maus or Chinese acres, but as it has not been the general custom in the districts to calculate the area of land by maus, but rather by the amount of grain required to sow a field, they also report the area of their land in this manner, two and a half tau of grain heino ernivel to one mau (0.1515 English
But even this
official standard mėg and at Shat'aukok throughout the Ü
Ine is in Tau of 8 shing is employed in the Ts'iin Wan and some other Districts. The areas reported can only be regarded as approximate for the present and no exact data can be obtained until the survey of the territory has been completed.
Claimants also have to state the situation of their fields. They generally give the local name of the land and the nearest village, but since no exact indications are given of the situation, it will not be easy to find any field from the description given by the claimants.
The Land Officer gives a number to each form filled up by a claimant, and a corresponding number to the title deed, if there be any, which will facilitate future reference.
After all the claims to land in the special district have been reported and ex- amined, a list (see Appendix No. VII) is posted in the neighbourhood of each village of all owners of land and of the holdings claimed, and the villagers are called upon to report any claim that is not inserted in the list or any alteration that may be required to make the list as accurate as possible.
After the Crown rent fixed as due on a claim has been paid, a provisional cer- tificate of title will be issued in the first instance, and if, after the lapse of sufficient time, no dispute regarding the claim arises, a certificate of the owner's title will be issued and registered.
I attach a memorandum by Mr. BRUCE SHEPHERD on the work done in the Head Land Office at Victoria in respect of the area south of the Kowloon hills and the islands to the West of the Colony (see Appendix No. VIII).
Although the system of land registration adopted by the Chinese Government is apparently simple, the difficulties that have been experienced in connection with it show it to be of the most unsatisfactory nature, especially as not much reliance can be placed upon the accuracy of any title deeds registered under it.