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Home ownership stats rosy and misleading
By People's Daily website |
August 10, 2012, Friday
|
Print Edition
Print Edition
IT'S difficult to see the real picture of China's housing market because ambiguous statistics abound.
On August 5, Peking University announced that China's per capita average living space hit a new high of 36 square meters last year. Reading this piece of "good news," many people say they have involuntarily been "averaged up." On May 13, the Southwestern University of Finance and Economics and the People's Bank of China announced that 89.68 percent of Chinese people own a house, far above the world's average of 60 percent. Reading this piece of "great news," many people jeer that they have involuntarily been made a home owner. None of these figures take into account the reality of China's fast urbanization.
Yes, many farmers own a home in the countryside, but after they migrate into cities, they become homeless in the place where they make a living. Yes, many apartments in cities have been sold, but to whom? To speculators or to those who need a home?
What China lacks today are solid findings about how many sold homes are never occupied.
On August 5, Peking University announced that China's per capita average living space hit a new high of 36 square meters last year. Reading this piece of "good news," many people say they have involuntarily been "averaged up." On May 13, the Southwestern University of Finance and Economics and the People's Bank of China announced that 89.68 percent of Chinese people own a house, far above the world's average of 60 percent. Reading this piece of "great news," many people jeer that they have involuntarily been made a home owner. None of these figures take into account the reality of China's fast urbanization.
Yes, many farmers own a home in the countryside, but after they migrate into cities, they become homeless in the place where they make a living. Yes, many apartments in cities have been sold, but to whom? To speculators or to those who need a home?
What China lacks today are solid findings about how many sold homes are never occupied.
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