The Ministry of Land and Resources will block some companies from buying more land in coming auctions after a number of their sites went undeveloped, in some cases for up to eight years.
In a list on the ministry's website, 26 undeveloped sites on the mainland were named along with the firms and parent companies that own them.
China Petroleum & Chemical Corp (Sinopec) was one company on the list. In Beijing, Sinopec's Beijing Jing Tian Real Estate Development holds three residential sites, with an area of 26.86 hectares, and building on the sites should have started in September 2004, the ministry said.
Also identified were five plots in Beijing, five in Shanghai, two in Jiangsu and others spread around Wuxi in Wuhan and Changsha in Hunan.
Building work on the Shanghai sites should have begun between 2002 and 2004.
In September, the central government announced rules to curb the hoarding of land by developers in its efforts to cool speculation in the nation's property sector.