Lui Qiu Luwei (Èóæ‰∏òÈú≤Ëñá), a Hong Kong journalist/blogger wrote a post about China’s property market. Hegel Chong translated on his Reading China blog:
Today I attended a conference. I agree with the view of one of the scholars on China’s problem of property market. He pointed out a crucial issue. Now our aim is to ensure everybody has accomodations or everybody owns flat?
According to the current trend, the China government works hard on the latter. We are moving toward everybody owning a flat. Let’s put the issue of land ownership not being included in property ownership. Now the ownership rate is 90% in China, far higher than the US’s 70%. We should thank the housing reform for such a high ownership rate. The enterprises sell housing to staff at a price extremely lower than the market price. The price is determined by your length of service and position. A flat whose market price is hundreds of thousand RMB might be sold to staff at the price of tens of thousand. One of the reason is that China had practiced a low wage system for a long time. So offering low-price flats is a compensation for it. But this results in an unfair phenomenon. How about those young staff who enter the enterprise later? The supply of housing by the enterprise is limited. When will they get their own flats? Some who do not want to wait go to the market. But the market price is so high that they could not afford. This causes people’s grievances over housing problems. [Full Text]
