美国公司热卖月球地产

Staff in the Netherlands and Spain were less stressed than Britons

China may be years away from a lunar landing but one company is offering a piece of "land" there right now. The so-called Lunar Embassy, through which one can purchase an acre on the moon for 298 yuan (US$37), started operations yesterday in Beijing. Li Jie, chief executive officer of Beijing Lunar Village Aeronautics Science Co Ltd, said his company is the sole agent in China for US-based Lunar Embassy. The area? Between 20 and 24 degrees latitude north and 30 to 34 degrees longitude west, the company says. Lunar Embassy will issue customers a "certificate" that ensures property ownership including rights to use the land and minerals up to 3 kilometres underground "We define it as a kind of

novelty gift with the potential of unlimited increase in value," said Li, who was nominated as the agent in China by Dennis Hope, a US entrepreneur who founded the first extraterrestrial estate agency Lunar Embassy in 1980. Hope thinks a

loophole in the 1967 UN Outer Space Treaty makes his property sales legitimate. The agreement forbids governments from owning extraterrestrial property, but fails to mention corporations or individuals. "I have 3.5 million customers including ex-US presidents Ronald Reagan, Jimmy Carter and movie stars who have purchased land on the moon," said Hope at a press conference yesterday in Beijing. China is the eighth country to have a Lunar Embassy after the United States, Germany, Britain, Ireland, Australia, New Zealand and Japan, he said. And there appear to be at least some moonstruck people in China Li told reporters that he had received more than 400 telephone orders in the past few days. Meanwhile, not all believe that the trading is legal; and some even regard it as fraud or a joke.

(Agencies)