SHANGHAI - As the years dividing successive generations of Chinese become more and more numerous, the amount of time that people are allowed to own cemetery plots should be extended, says a funeral expert.

Qiao Kuanyuan, from the China Funeral Association, made the comment after netizens raised an outcry during the tomb-sweeping holiday this month over a regulation stipulating that legal ownership of cemetery spaces should expire after 20 years.

Media reports said that the regulation, issued in 1998 by the Ministry of Civil Affairs, recommends that purchasers of burial plots and of frames used to store the ashes of deceased loved ones be given the right to use burial properties for up to 20 years in principle.