China bans storing human remains in empty high-rise flats

China bans storing human remains in empty high-rise flats

China is set to ban the practice of using "bone ash apartments" to store cremated remains.

The new law, which will come into effect on Tuesday, prohibits the use of residential housing for this purpose and mandates that human remains be buried only in designated areas such as public cemeteries.

The law was introduced ahead of the Qingming festival, a traditional time for tomb-sweeping and ancestor worship in China.

Bone ash apartments

The practice of using bone ash apartments, or "guhui fang," had become popular due to the high cost of funeral services and limited cemetery space.

These apartments were often transformed into ancestral shrines with candles and urns.

The trend was especially prevalent in remote residential complexes where such units could be cheaper than public cemetery plots.

Cemetery spaces are limited and need a temporary lease that must be renewed every 20 years.

Rising funeral costs

China is also facing an aging population with 11.3 million deaths in 2025, up from 9.8 million in 2015. This demographic shift has increased demand for burial plots, further straining resources.

Funerals in China are among the world's most expensive after Japan, costing nearly half of the average annual salary in 2020 according to a survey by British insurer SunLife.

New requirements for funeral industry

Mourners have been taking advantage of low property costs in China, which have plummeted in recent years and were down 40% in 2025 compared to 2021.

On Tuesday, the State Administration for Market Regulation and the Ministry of Civil Affairs introduced new requirements for the funeral industry over high cost concerns.

The ministry said it would introduce new rules to tackle fraud and a lack of transparency in funeral pricing to "reduce the burden of funerals on the masses."

Public reaction

The ban on bone ash apartments has sparked skepticism on social media platforms like Weibo.

One user questioned how authorities would enforce the law, asking, "Who's going to go in and check? Or are they planning to put a GPS tracker on every single urn?"

Another user lamented the high cost of cemetery plots, saying, "Even at 90% off, cemetery plots are still too expensive."