4.2.2. Legal Factor

To protect outstanding traditional architecture, the government implemented the Law of the People's Republic of China on the Protection of Cultural Relics in 1982. Historical buildings were classified as national, provincial, and municipal cultural relic protection units according to their historical, cultural, and artistic value. In addition, local governments established protection lists for outstanding historical buildings excluded from cultural relic protection units, such as the Excellent Historical buildings in Shanghai, the Excellent Modern Buildings in Beijing, the Historic Feature Buildings in Xiamen, and the Controlled and Protected Buildings in Suzhou [3,29]. However, the original complex property rights problem worsened when the cultural relic labels were added to the buildings [28].

Article 5 of the 1982 Law stipulates that for all memorial buildings, historical buildings, and cultural relics publicly or privately owned, ownership is under the protection of national laws, and the owners of these cultural relics must abide by the regulations of the country on cultural relic protection and management. In addition, the law stipulates that buildings owned by the state and protected as cultural relics cannot be sold on the market [30,31]. The property rights of these buildings are redefined by national laws; that

is, residents and users only have usage rights. The buildings are publicly owned and the local government represents the state in terms of supervision and control. Given the feature described above, an intersection between these two types of property rights emerges when historical buildings are listed as cultural relics, thereby making it difficult to determine and obtain rights to yields derived from ownership [32]. The value form cannot be separated from the value entity. Therefore, defining the boundary of property rights is difficult, as it is obscure in an actual operation.

In addition to unclear property rights, inappropriate modes of property rights can damage historical buildings. Certain historical buildings are public houses with property rights under the direct administration of the government. Most of such buildings are overused, endure exposure to wind and rain, and incur degrees of damage that are extremely high. Therefore, maintenance expenses are considerably large, and residents have no incentive to contribute to the maintenance of such buildings. Article 6, Chapter 1 of the 1982 Law stipulates that expenses for cultural relic protection and management shall be included in the financial budget of the central and local government; that is, the government should arrange the protection and management of historical resident houses and fund their repair and protection. Although residents are not required to make contributions, they can enjoy the benefits. In such cases, historical houses repaired with government funds can be regarded as public articles and thus enjoyed by residents free of charge. Therefore, people ignore the protection of historical buildings, as they can enjoy the benefits without assuming responsibility. To maximise such benefits, residents may overuse or damage buildings under controlled protection. Conflicts between the use and maintenance of historical buildings will result in a conflict between the government's invalid investment in such buildings and residents' overconsumption.

Therefore, currently, historical buildings that suffer from the most severe damages are historical buildings whose property rights belong to the state. This problem is common in historical cities in China. As the maintenance and upgrading of historical buildings require large amounts of financial and technical resources, the government's budget cannot satisfy this demand. Therefore, for such buildings, the government has maintained an attitude of 'not aspiring for the ownership but the existence', in order to transfer usage or property rights, activate and reuse historical buildings by cooperating with social forces, and extend the longevity of such buildings. In the case of complicated property rights, the clarification of property rights and adaptive reuse were problems that needed to be resolved.
