In the space of a few years, China established both the world's largest system of land registration and world's largest databse of court judgments. Faced with challenges such as greatly increased incidents of identity fraud, the system has quickly developed legal rules and well as practical measures in response. Despite the significant differences between the jurisdictions, these offer valuable lessons for English law where there is the ongoing effort to 'update' land registration law and practice. Simple measures such as the recording of birthdays of registered proprietors or taking pictures of those who claim to be proprietors would go a long way in dealing with much of the difficulties that the English system has been encoutering.