From Business Week:
Today, China is richer, and that’s unquestionably a good thing. A huge wave of privatizations, mergers, and shutdowns within the once-sprawling state-owned corporate sector has cleared away a lot of deadwood. Home ownership in big cities such as Beijing and Shanghai is high by global standards. Yet China is also home to far more income inequality, environmental wreckage, and social unrest. Mainlanders lucky enough to have gotten into the housing market over the last decade are enjoying a sweet ride. Younger couples and rural transplants are having a tough time finding affordable housing.
Such is the social backdrop to the current great economic debate over how best to handle China’s overheated property market. [Full text]