First, the "baby boom" and the expansion of university enrollment in the past 20 years have created a "loyal customer base" in the China property market, which also determines the "short-lived" characteristics of the China property market.
"Market demand" is one of the most critical starting points for analyzing any economic problem. So, where does the strong demand of China real estate market come from? Some people think that the urbanization process in China will inevitably lead to hundreds of millions of farmers entering cities, thus making the market demand for China real estate continue to be strong. This is a seemingly powerful conclusion drawn by many mainstream economists in China after a large number of data surveys. However, being strong in theory does not mean being feasible in reality. China's urbanization is not "natural" as experts think, and it is the engine of soaring housing prices.
First of all, China's urbanization has a long way to go, and it is impossible to copy the European, American and Japanese models. China is a "dual structure" society in urban and rural areas. Go-vern ment divides China people into "city people" and "country people" through strict household registration system, which is essentially different from western countries. For a long time, "vested interests" and "social security" have plagued the household registration reform in China for eight years, but there has been no substantial progress, which has created great obstacles for the urbanization of agricultural population. Hundreds of millions of peasants who entered the city failed to become urban residents, but instead became "new city refugees", which led to a sharp deterioration of social security. The "lag" of the political system has caused China's "illusion of urbanization". China has a population of1400 million. To realize the urbanization of 70% population is far beyond the resources of China and even the whole world. Some experts have made interesting statistics: If all China people reach the living standard of the American people, then it is obviously impossible for China's GDP to reach at least 50 times that of the United States. The "resource bottleneck" has become the "unbearable weight" of urbanization in China. Don't just see the high consumption life in Europe, America and Japan. In fact, they are based on the "plunder" of natural resources and cheap labor in the third world countries around the world. Japan's forest coverage rate is 67%, but forestry logging is strictly controlled. Instead, a large number of tropical rainforests were cut down from Southeast Asia, and disposable wooden chopsticks were imported from China at low prices. In recent years, the United States has moved a large number of factories to China, but it has captured most of the profits by monopolizing technology and brands. It is reported that the profit of an American brand ipod made in China is $62, while the processing factory in China only gets a processing fee of $4. Xie Guozhong, a native of China, said that "China only got a little bread crumbs in international communication", which made us see the sadness of the China model. The Wall Street Journal published an article entitled "We Think, They Sweat", which showed the superiority of Americans. China media frequently published articles such as "China's price is posted all over the world, and China's pension is in the United States", which triggered national reflection on the "China model"; Perhaps because of this, the China government has painstakingly put forward the strategic concept of "building an innovative country".
In short, China's hundreds of millions of cheap laborers, who are at the bottom of the food chain of economic globalization, want to "share the global economic feast" with the economic predators, just "draw cakes to satisfy their hunger". In the lifetime of our generation, it is impossible for China people to reach the development level of Europe, America and Japan, and it is also impossible to complete the task of "urbanization" by rebuilding the market economic system and improving the quality of the whole people only by enthusiasm, diligence and the courage of "economic great leap forward".
Secondly, the backward basic education in China in the 50 years since the founding of the People's Republic of China forced the urbanization of China to pay a heavy price of "time delay". The reason why Japan can leap from a small country with poor resources to an economic power is inseparable from its "national policy of re-education" from the Meiji Restoration. In socialist China, although slogans such as "No matter how hard you suffer, you can't suffer children, and no matter how poor you are, you can't afford education" can be seen everywhere, the investment in basic education has always been in the "backward ranks" in the world. We can't imagine that hundreds of millions of farmers with poor families and poor knowledge can transform overnight, squeeze into the ranks of white-collar workers and have the strength to buy a house just because they have entered the city. The reality is that the vast majority of farmers who enter the city, even "upper-class migrant workers" such as contractors, can hardly bear the high housing prices in the city. Although they really want to own their own house in the city, although this class has a large population, it is obviously unconvincing to attribute them to the huge effective demand of China real estate market because of their low actual income and expected income.
Then, to a certain extent, where does the real demand for this round of housing price increases come from?
Statistics show that the period from 1962 to 1982 was the biggest baby boom in China in recent 20 years, with a cumulative birth population of over 450 million. Now these people have entered the employment period, and the demand for housing is strong. However, the real effective demand still lies in the policy of "Enrollment Expansion in Colleges and Universities" launched by Zhu Rongji go-vern-ment in 1998. At that time, faced with enormous employment pressure, Zhu Rongji vigorously promoted "enrollment expansion in colleges and universities" for the strategic consideration of "reducing the unemployment pressure of the whole society and letting young people return to colleges and universities". Obviously, this is only a "stopgap measure", and the temporarily relieved employment pressure will inevitably erupt on a larger scale after four years. In 2002, the first batch of college students graduated. Most of these young intellectuals who have left their homes have higher incomes and are unwilling to return to backward rural areas. The rigid household registration system makes them always lack a sense of belonging in the city. Without a "hukou", they can't get married locally, they can't let their children enjoy local educational resources fairly, and they can't even get a license to buy bicycles. This group of helpless college students can only realize their most basic dreams by buying a house. They are the most rigid demand in China real estate market.
However, we also have to notice that with the latest baby boomers entering the period of employment, marriage and house purchase, this "house purchase tide" triggered by "baby boomers" and "enrollment expansion tide" should also ebb. According to China's census data, from 1964 to 1982, China's annual net population increase is about170,000; From 1982 to 1990, China's annual net population increased by about150,000; 1990 to 2000, the annual net increase of population in China was about120,000; From 2000 to 2005, the population of China increased by about 8 million every year. With the decrease of newborns and the aging of baby boomers, the aging of China society is irreversible. After 2020, the population over 50 will reach about 600 million, and the elderly population will account for more than 40% of the total population. This is definitely not good news for the real estate market in China. Can China's economy, which is based on hundreds of millions of ultra-cheap labor, really keep the myth of unbeaten real estate for a long time? More and more elderly people don't have strong motivation to buy a house, and fewer and fewer young people face the heavy pressure of "two young people raising four old people". How rigid is their demand for housing? This is doubtful. Those friends who buy a house for the elderly may face long-term stable depreciation of real estate after entering old age, and the rental market is also facing downward difficulties because of the diversion of floating population in countless small and medium-sized cities. The ancients said: things are unpredictable, think twice before you act.
As the proverb goes, it never rains but it pours. The "aging tide" has just arisen, and the "unemployment tide" has followed. It's really "the back waves of the Yangtze River push the front waves, and the front waves die on the beach". Following the "two waves of unemployment" of "educated youth returning home" and "laid-off workers from state-owned enterprises", the "third wave of unemployment" caused by overcapacity and industrial upgrading is coming soon. You can pay attention to the recent major media. The main body of this wave of unemployment will no longer be employees of state-owned enterprises and educated youth returning home, but young white-collar workers with good educational background. The college graduates with geometric growth are faced with enterprises with declining benefits, which leads to the decline of their starting salaries year after year, which is "very abnormal" under the background of "all-round rapid price increase" in China. How can we afford "water-filled commercial housing" with "shrinking wages"? If China's economy cannot make foreign white-collar workers and other "most rigid property buyers" rich, China's housing prices will inevitably turn around.
Second, China's failed housing market reform has provided institutional guarantee for the chaos of China's real estate market, and this failed system cannot support the long-term prosperity of China's real estate market.
We say that the welfare housing distribution system under the planned economy is not good because it can not achieve the optimal allocation of resources, resulting in the housing shortage and unfair distribution in the whole society. Therefore, the China Municipal Government has vigorously promoted the housing market-oriented reform, which is an important step in China's economic market-oriented strategy in the long run. Judging from the situation at that time, it was also go-vern-ment eager to use the real estate market to start the weak domestic "domestic demand" and stimulate economic growth. Although the idea is good, the China administration's "lack of progress" in political reform has led to the fatalistic tragic fate of China real estate "only guessing the beginning, but not the end". It should be said that until tomorrow, China still has not established a truly standardized and market-oriented real estate market. Moreover, as far as go-vern-ment's ambiguous attitude towards its own interests is concerned, China's real estate market cannot be expected to be established in a short time. Why do you say that?
The so-called market economy has two key "necessary conditions", one is the independence of ownership, the other is the equality of the status of both parties to the transaction; Because only "ownership independence" can the two sides exchange in the market. Before the reform and opening up, all the property in China was publicly owned, so there was no exchange. In addition, if the two parties are unequal, one party can force the other party to accept unreasonable prices, which will not play a role in optimizing the allocation of resources in the market. Therefore, there is no market economy without the equality of both parties to the transaction. Let's take a look at the real estate market in China. Neither of these conditions has been fulfilled.
Although China go-vern ment announced the cancellation of the welfare housing distribution system from 1998, as the most critical element of the real estate industry, land has been firmly controlled by go-vern ment, and it is up to go-vern ment to decide which land can be developed and which land cannot be developed, and how much to develop each year. Without the independence of land ownership, although the purchaser bought the house, the land under the house is still go-vern-ment, which means you have no ownership of the house you bought. "If the skin does not exist, the hair will be attached", which brings great "uncertainty risk" to property buyers. For example, the service life of residential land in China is 70 years, but what do you think is the possibility that you can own it in 70 years? You can go to the street to see how many houses (except cultural relics) 70 years ago have not been demolished. The reality is that with the political impulse of the local government to "run the city", many houses in the 1980s (only used for more than 20 years) have already faced the fate of being demolished, and it is really rare to survive for 70 years. Some people may ask: I have spent my whole life buying a house, and I have three certificates. How can I just tear it down? Indeed, the house is yours, but it is not built in the air, and the land it relies on is beyond your reach. Every inch of land in China belongs to the state (local governments exercise ownership on behalf of the state). Since the land belongs to the state, it is naturally uncompromising, reasonable and legal for go-vern-ment to requisition the land occupied by your family. In 2004 and 2005, the public green space in Nanjing Renhe Jiayuan Community was forcibly requisitioned by violence, which is a good proof. Although you have the legal ownership of the property, it is legal for the government to demolish your house. Does this look like a paradox? 199 1 year, Beijing Beichen Group developed a villa community named "View the World" on the central axis of Beijing, and the price of more than 2,400 US dollars/square was really "sky-high" at that time. Only ten years after hundreds of wealthy families with considerable social influence moved into their homes, the main Olympic stadium was demolished "without consultation" because it was located here. In 2005, in Nanjing, the ancient capital of the Six Dynasties, there was another event that caused great controversy among the citizens, that is, the news that prosperous Hua Ting would be demolished:1996,6000 yuan/square meter of prosperous Hua Ting, forming an earlier rich area in Nanjing. However, these celebrities who have wealth, status, social influence and legal property rights of their houses are still facing the embarrassing situation that their private property cannot be guaranteed, and the reason is so funny that "go-vern-ment wants to build prosperous Hua Ting into a commercial leisure and entertainment area" and even brazenly claims that it is to "protect Xuanwu Lake". In recent years, most of the violent incidents caused by demolition all over the country are related to the absurd separation system of housing property rights and land ownership.
In fact, as can be seen from the above cases, in China's so-called "real estate market", the two parties to the transaction are seriously unequal. The seller is a developer with billions of wealth. The developer's capital and the power of go-vern ment form an alliance under the cognition of interests, and its strong position is self-evident. As the ordinary people on the other side of the transaction, they not only have no land ownership, no right to speak about demolition, no right to participate in the pricing of commercial housing, and even no real information about selling houses. Clearly deceiving customers, but claiming to be "selling control"; Clearly conniving at housing prices, but claiming to be "market economy, go-vern-ment can not interfere with pricing"; Obviously it is market support, but it claims to protect the assets of the vast majority of people who own houses from shrinking; Obviously, it is a large-scale self-built house, but on the grounds of "policy vacuum", it tries its best to obstruct the people's efforts to build their own houses. The so-called market economy without "fairness" can not only optimize the allocation of resources, but even worse than the planned economy. In fact, this kind of "economic monster" which combines speculative capital and power will not only harm the interests of ordinary people, but even the wealthy class will not be spared. Not long ago, Harbin's "sky-high medical expenses incident" and Nanjing's "Hua Ting's impending demolition incident" were all cases aimed at the rich.
Then, how did this failed system lead to the short-term prosperity of China property market? And how long will it last?
1998 after the abolition of welfare housing distribution in China, except for government agencies and "institutions within the system" (research institutes, universities, etc. ), the vast majority of ordinary people are forced to solve the housing problem only in a "market way". Old Nanjing can realize that most houses in the planned economy era have a series of problems, such as monotonous and unreasonable apartment layout, no community landscape and backward planning, which makes people's desire to improve their residential areas unprecedentedly strong. On the other hand, the long-term welfare housing allocation has accumulated a lot of effective demand for narrow living space due to insufficient qualifications. These "compensatory housing demand" caused by institutional reasons broke out after 2002, which is another important reason for the soaring housing prices in China. However, this demand comes and goes quickly and cannot last long. It should be said that the wave of buying houses in recent two or three years has digested most of the effective components of these "compensatory needs" (mainly for developed coastal areas, with the central and western regions lagging behind slightly). It is obviously a pipe dream to expect this demand to support the rapid development of China real estate buildings in the past 20 years.
Third, the unbalanced economic development in China and the chaos in the financial market have provided sufficient funds for the real estate market in China.
If there is not enough money, the real estate market in China can't be so "over-prosperous", so where does the money come from? Why is so much money willing to enter the real estate market?
First of all, the rapid development of China's economy has led to a huge increase in currency circulation, which has created an absolute large number of "rich first class" (the relative proportion is not high). China's "rich first class" is very characteristic of China. Most of them are the power class and the capital class, but few people really get rich legally by so-called "honest labor". The ratio of officials to civilians in China is 1:28, and the civil servant class, which accounts for 1/28 of China population, can be said to be the largest affluent class in China. A few years ago, complaints about the low salary of civil servants were common, and the news that civil servants resigned and went to sea was endless. But almost overnight, civil servants have become the "most sought-after" profession. Last year, the spectacular scene of 654.38+100,000 people competing in the civil service exam is probably still fresh in everyone's memory! Why do people like being civil servants so much? Recently, I read the salary slip of a 24-year-old female civil servant in Shanghai on the Internet. Although this little girl who just graduated from college has a monthly salary of only 1200 yuan (which has not reached the threshold of personal income tax), it is strange that after 7788 a year, her income is as high as 90,000 yuan, with an average of 8,000 yuan per month, equivalent to more than 9,000 yuan. Even in a first-tier city like Shanghai, it is amazing enough to have such income just after graduation. The second "first rich class" is the middle and senior cadres of monopoly and state-owned enterprises. A well-known online post: I dare not pay my girlfriend with an annual salary of130,000. It tells the story of a graduate student who works in Nanjing Power Supply Bureau with an annual salary of130,000, but is deeply stressed by survival. This shows that the profits of these monopoly departments are so rich. This kind of salary divorced from the level of social and economic development is the result of the survival of the fittest in the market or the blessing of the power umbrella. I don't need to say it! Besides state-owned enterprises, China has accumulated trillions of state-owned assets in the past 50 years. However, with the MBO reform of state-owned enterprises and the sale of a large number of state-owned enterprises, so many assets have changed from "owned by the whole people" to "sacred private property" of some people in such a short time. How can people's grievances not boil and how can they not lead to polarization between the rich and the poor? This is the fundamental reason why people support "Lang Xianping". More ironically, when the central government realized that there were problems in the auction of state-owned assets, it found that the state-owned assets had basically been sold out. In 2005, this unhealthy trend of dividing state-owned assets spread to large and medium-sized state-owned enterprises. Take a large state-owned enterprise in Luzhong as an example. The highest legal annual salary of first-line and middle-level leaders such as workshop directors and factory directors is as high as 200,000 yuan. Even the team leader who graduated from a technical school can earn more than 5,000 yuan only in key workshops, while the monthly salary of ordinary workers is only 1000 yuan. The huge injustice of this distribution is so widespread that the central government issued a document in early 2006 to curb the excessive growth of operating income of state-owned enterprises. However, it is obvious that the central government "cannot leave Zhongnanhai" has been unable to control this systematic and legal stripping of state-owned assets. There is also an affluent class that cannot be ignored, that is, the capitalist comprador class. For example, Mr. Scott Mann, who is very famous in Nanjing Huaqiao Road Teahouse, is a typical representative of this class. Foreigners have made a lot of money from consumers in China, allowing a large number of laborers to sell their labors at low prices, but at the same time, they have also created a large number of rich foreign comprador, and gained their own "success" through the extra profits of multinational groups.
Since there are so many rich people in society, in China, which has the tradition of "buying a house and buying land", what can you buy without buying a house? What's more, house prices are still rising with joy.
Secondly, the "dual society" structure of China's urban-rural division has fundamentally caused the extreme imbalance of regional development, prompting excessive concentration of housing funds. The income of many people in the eastern part of Shanghai has been synchronized with the international income, while a large number of rural areas in the central and western regions are still working in the fields for the monthly income of 500 yuan, forming a "marathon social structure". As the saying goes: water flows downwards, and people go upwards. The imbalance of economic development naturally leads to the concentration of the "first rich class" in poor areas to developed areas, and the "first rich class" in rural areas to cities. The number of this group cannot be underestimated. The behavior of rich coal bosses in Shanxi, such as real estate speculation in Beijing and Shanghai, is the extreme reaction of this trend.
Third, China's long-term moderate inflation and rotten stock market have caused uncertain prospects, which led to the influx of funds into the property market. The author came into contact with a middle-aged man who was engaged in medicinal materials business in Nanjing with a monthly salary of 30,000. What he is most worried about is asset depreciation and pension. Qiancun Bank has a fixed interest rate of 2.25 a year, but everyone feels that the annual price increase is far more than this. So Qiancun Bank is actually burning money slowly, until one day, your life savings are worthless, and it really happened when the Soviet Union disintegrated. There is also the issue of old-age care. China's pension account deficit exceeds 2.5 trillion yuan, almost equivalent to China's annual fiscal revenue, and with the reduction of the working population and the acceleration of the aging process, this figure will expand to 10 trillion yuan. Don't worry about counting on such funds to support the elderly? So what should we do? Have to buy a house. The herbalist's plan is to buy three high-end houses and one or two shops, hoping to live on rent when he is old. There are not a few people who share his ideas. From the macro environment, the stock market is depressed, the yield of bank wealth management products is low, and the interest rate of national debt is low. It seems that there is only a shortcut to invest in real estate.
Although there are many rich people, the real estate market in China still needs the support of the vast majority of ordinary people. In other words, based on the extreme polarization between the rich and the poor in China, the housing prices in China will inevitably rise and fall. When the house price is in the upward cycle, an absolute large number of the first richest people speculate in real estate on a large scale. With the help of bank funds, this speculative capital can expand three to five times. When house prices are stagnating and falling, large-scale funds will be drawn to the bottom of the axe, and the real estate market with high house prices will form an embarrassing situation that "the rich are afraid to buy and the poor can't afford it", so price reduction is inevitable. China's current real estate market is at such a stage. But some people may wonder why house prices still seem to be firm. Yi Xianrong tells us a key reason in theory: a huge and symmetrical hand supports the real estate market. So, who is supporting the market? The answer is local governments and banks, which can be seen from Nanjing's large-scale demolition plan this year. This is actually a way to delay the death of unhealthy bodies by harming the interests of ordinary people. It is precisely because of the intervention of power that China real estate, a "hundred-legged worm", can "die without being stiff".