BEIJING, May 8 -- China established a government agency to supervise property registration on Thursday as part of an effort to accelerate the registration process.

The bureau, under the Ministry of Land and Resources, will be in charge of the registration of land, real estate, forest, grassland and maritime space.

China plans to build a national property registration system in about three years and make it operational for information sharing and queries in four years.

The system is expected to make the property market more transparent and serve as foundation work to better regulate the market.