Houses are for living, not for speculation
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This post did not contain any content.wrote last edited by [email protected]
China does many things wrong but housing isn't one of them.
Americans will decry the American housing crisis and simultaneously mock China for over production of housing which caused a housing price crash.
"I can't afford a house!"
"China is so stupid, they have empty cities." -
China does many things wrong but housing isn't one of them.
Americans will decry the American housing crisis and simultaneously mock China for over production of housing which caused a housing price crash.
"I can't afford a house!"
"China is so stupid, they have empty cities."I don't knock them for over production, but build quality is a more common problem that I saw. Also not a fan of not being able to own the apartment, but their availability is dope. Their public transit is also dope, both inter and intra city transit.
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China does many things wrong but housing isn't one of them.
Americans will decry the American housing crisis and simultaneously mock China for over production of housing which caused a housing price crash.
"I can't afford a house!"
"China is so stupid, they have empty cities."The joke of the "China is building empty cities" mythology is in how quickly they filled up with people. So you had this echoing "New City is empty!" scandal that reverberated all the way from Fujian to Qinghai.
There was a problem of housing speculation, as investors tried to get out ahead of the building frenzy. But the state government intervened to curb that practice. There was a problem of shady contractors and construction crews shaving quality for profit, even leading to a couple of high profile building collapses. But the state government sent out investigators, prosecuted delinquents, and provided restitution to the injured and defrauded. There was a problem of matching the housing stock to the available employment, particularly during the economic slowdown in the wake of SARS in the early '00s and then COVID in '19. But the state government intervened to quarantine, vaccinate, and restabilize the local economies.
Curiously, the US loves to report on the crises. We never like to talk about the recoveries. Instead, you get this doggedly fixation on pivotal moments in the past that endure long after they are relevant. It would be like reading newspapers and hearing radio about Florida, where everyone brought up the '08 Housing Crash at every opportunity. They dogmatically insisted that real estate prices can't recover, even in the middle of a construction boom and new speculation bubble a decade later.
This misinformation that persists in any kind of conversation is deafening. It's gotten to the point that some random guy can do a livestream YouTube vacation blog in Chengdu and western critics lose their fucking minds in disbelief. Like, the very idea that everyone in the country isn't still living in 1980s levels of rural poverty is entirely unimaginable.
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The joke of the "China is building empty cities" mythology is in how quickly they filled up with people. So you had this echoing "New City is empty!" scandal that reverberated all the way from Fujian to Qinghai.
There was a problem of housing speculation, as investors tried to get out ahead of the building frenzy. But the state government intervened to curb that practice. There was a problem of shady contractors and construction crews shaving quality for profit, even leading to a couple of high profile building collapses. But the state government sent out investigators, prosecuted delinquents, and provided restitution to the injured and defrauded. There was a problem of matching the housing stock to the available employment, particularly during the economic slowdown in the wake of SARS in the early '00s and then COVID in '19. But the state government intervened to quarantine, vaccinate, and restabilize the local economies.
Curiously, the US loves to report on the crises. We never like to talk about the recoveries. Instead, you get this doggedly fixation on pivotal moments in the past that endure long after they are relevant. It would be like reading newspapers and hearing radio about Florida, where everyone brought up the '08 Housing Crash at every opportunity. They dogmatically insisted that real estate prices can't recover, even in the middle of a construction boom and new speculation bubble a decade later.
This misinformation that persists in any kind of conversation is deafening. It's gotten to the point that some random guy can do a livestream YouTube vacation blog in Chengdu and western critics lose their fucking minds in disbelief. Like, the very idea that everyone in the country isn't still living in 1980s levels of rural poverty is entirely unimaginable.
They're building infrastructure. Infrastructure enables economic growth.
The US builds nothing but more luxury homes, casinos and sports stadiums.... and whatever fast food trend is growing.
I know it's not quite that simple, but it sure feels like it sometimes.
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They're building infrastructure. Infrastructure enables economic growth.
The US builds nothing but more luxury homes, casinos and sports stadiums.... and whatever fast food trend is growing.
I know it's not quite that simple, but it sure feels like it sometimes.
I know it’s not quite that simple,
It's kinda worse than that. The US financialized the luxury homes and casinos and sports stadiums. So they're paying a vig on a vig to give a tiny minority the 1980s conception of luxury.
Enormous sums of money just get recirculated into speculative investment. This has created the cryptocurrency surge - yet another layer of speculative investment - and the ballooning investment in AI as a means of automating marketing and debt collection.
We've done the Economy That Just Makes Paperclips except without the paperclips.
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All Chinese tier 1 and 2 cities face the same issue as US. People can't afford to buy housing on their income unless families help out.
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Remember when Mao executed landlords?
He seemed crazy at the time.
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And yet their home ownership is still greater than 90%. Ownership is for your lifetime without property tax. Yes families work together to afford homes but it is normal in asian cultures to live with your family for a long time. I wouldn't call their housing situation comparable to the US.
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Remember when Mao executed landlords?
He seemed crazy at the time.
I mean, he was crazy, for that and many other reasons. It's not like all landlords are money-grubbing greedy fucks with no other marketable skills. I'm sure many could've transitioned tp normal work just fine.
... Though the VCs buying up entire city blocks of houses at a time? Yea, they can be strung up from the trees...
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I don't knock them for over production, but build quality is a more common problem that I saw. Also not a fan of not being able to own the apartment, but their availability is dope. Their public transit is also dope, both inter and intra city transit.
Take a look at the build quality of $500,000 homes that are being built in the US today. They are absolute shit with some sparkly trim that stays nice long enough to distract you until the warranty expires.
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Remember when Mao executed landlords?
He seemed crazy at the time.
Do you truly, actually, believe that the reign of Mao was a net positive?
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China does many things wrong but housing isn't one of them.
Americans will decry the American housing crisis and simultaneously mock China for over production of housing which caused a housing price crash.
"I can't afford a house!"
"China is so stupid, they have empty cities."wrote last edited by [email protected]The current Chinese housing crisis was not caused by building homes for people to live in, it was caused by developers selling homes that didn’t exist with the empty promise that the would totally, definitely be built. Then the homes were never built for humans to actually live in.
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Do you truly, actually, believe that the reign of Mao was a net positive?
No, just that his stance on landlords may be worth revisiting.
Adam Smith was also anti-landlord, FWIW.
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Remember when Mao executed landlords?
He seemed crazy at the time.
Mao wasn't even the one who executed landlords. He just never really cracked down on the pissed off serfs running kangaroo courts on the people who wronged them.
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I don't knock them for over production, but build quality is a more common problem that I saw. Also not a fan of not being able to own the apartment, but their availability is dope. Their public transit is also dope, both inter and intra city transit.
wrote last edited by [email protected]definitely way higher incidence of build quality issues than the US but at most they seem to be at least as rare as US car crashes
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Take a look at the build quality of $500,000 homes that are being built in the US today. They are absolute shit with some sparkly trim that stays nice long enough to distract you until the warranty expires.
And that's more in line with the builds I saw over in China. I'm not defending our build quality (certainly not post 08 when a lot of construction companies went down or merged).
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I dunno, it was almost an every building thing I saw. We had a floating ceiling grate collapse all along our walkway in the middle of the day. Big rusty snarled mess.
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This post did not contain any content.wrote last edited by [email protected]
Let's not ignore that to get to this point, they had to kill most of the landlords, and then keep the rest of the industry under the heavy boot of the state.
Not to say it was the wrong thing to do, but it wasn't policy alone that made China a cheap place to live.
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I hate to say this, but there are many things that China is doing right.
