Chinese real estate is much more expensive than American real estate, even with the exchange rate. And mind you, almost all residences in China are apartments. Houses are called "mansions" over there. The price of land has doubled in two years. The market doesn't seem to be heading toward a housing bubble like the one America had, since most Chinese homebuyers pay upfront. Their marginal propensity to save is around 25-30%, which is much higher than Americans', which is somewhere around 5- 10%. In other words, if you save almost a third of your income, then you probably won't have high mortgage payments down the road. More and more Chinese people are investing in the stock market nowadays since the interest rate is much lower than the inflation.
Another interesting change I noticed during my travels was that most shops require customers to bring their own bags to encourage environmental conservation, like in Europe (Whether this is a governmental regulation or a private effort, I'm not sure). Granted, I was a bit miffed at first to have to shell out a few RMB's for a paper bag at the cash register, but then I was glad that the stores are doing this--with such a big population in China, saving one bag a person a day means saving 1.3 billion bags per day! It's also about time that I reform my wasteful ways. I felt that as a customer, I had the right to demand bags from stores, but now that I think about it, I also have the choice to use re-usable bags of my own and help the environment. Making that choice feels...kind of good.
Yux,
ReplyDeleteHow's the inflation? I here commodity prices are going through the roof in Asia!
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The inflation is pretty bad, and everyone complains about it. It's hurting the export industry too. Basic materials like cooking oil are getting more expensive, so if you see really cheap food at street vendors, you can bet they're using "recycled" oil because if they actually used the oil bought in stores they'd be broke. I wasn't used to it in the beginning. I went out with 300 rmb one day to do some shopping, and an hour later I ended up walking all the way home because I didn't have enough left to take a cab. What a sad day.
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