Prior to the end of the Cold War, socialist law was generally considered to be one of the major legal systems of the world. However, due to the collapse of communism in most countries, and the fact that it is very similar to the civil law system, many no longer consider it to be such. Most of the remaining communist countries, such as China, are slowly losing many of the distinctively command economy features from their legal system, as they come to adopt more market economies. The communist influence can still however be seen in places: witness for instance Chinese real estate law, where there is not a unified concept of real property which is normally not bought and sold (most of it being state-owned) but rather an complex ad-hoc system of use rights to the property are traded instead. In some cases, for example, in urban residental property, the system results in something that resembles real property transactions in other legal systems.
In other cases, the Chinese system results in something quite different. For example the owners of agricultural use rights do not necessarily have these rights associated with particular plots of land, and the land that corresponds to use rights are periodically reordered. This means that farmers can not borrow against these rights to obtain cash, however they can stop farming to pursue other businesses and have their land redistributed to other people, and then if necessary return to farming and reassert their use rights.
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