Beijingers have long complained about not affording anywhere to live—but it looks like they won't be able to afford anywhere to die either. A burial for cremated remains can cost RMB70,000 here in the city—and it looks like that's just the twenty-year rental fee.

Just in time for Qingming Festival (tomb-sweeping day), China’s Ministry of Civil Affairs reaffirmed that there were no property rights over graves—only usage rights. Current regulations allow plots to be rented for twenty years, beyond that, families must pay "management" fees to continue using the grave. Only about half of plots are state-owned, the rest up to an increasingly large array of private industries muscling in on the funeral business.

Grave plots are even snapped up by speculators buying up large quantities of graves and sell them at huge mark-ups. Ministry of Tofu posted one case of a woman spending RMB16,000 for ten grave plots in 2009. They are apparently worth RMB450,000 now.

Those outrageous sums are just usage fees—so if your family can't pay the maintenance fees twenty years in the future, expect to be dug up and stored elsewhere, while the plot goes to someone else.

We've heard of grave-robbing, but what's going on in China's odd mix of public and private is something entirely beyond the pale. It makes us wonder if the man in Tiananmen Square has paid his usage fees lately....