What are the Chinese property laws like?Are you allowed to own your own house and the land it stands on?After seeing the farmers riot a few months ago,I think not?
I think you can own the house but not the land. The land is officially leased to you for 100 yrs... Can any expert confirm this?
It sounds like Japan in the late 50's. there were so many opportunities but a person, once making foreign deposits, could not bring the profits back to the US. Good luck to you. Look at sydney markets for a nice and different data set.
The Hong Kong property laws stipulate a 99 year lease on the land, the Chinese property laws is a 70 (or 75?) year lease.
It is not true that foreigners can not bring profits back to the US (or any western countries for that matter). There are plenty of foreign banks in China, foreigners are free to open accounts in any of them in any currency domination, and then wire transfer the balance. Chinese nationals are permitted to open US dollar accounts in Chinese domestic banks, but the amount of foreign currency that can be exchanged is limited (but fairly high I believe, US$10k?) daily. The more developed parts of China reminds me of Taiwan in the early 90s, it is actually quite amazing. Japan in the 50s, after US occupation ended in '52 and a moderately successful Dodge Plan, barely have an industrialized economy and severely lacking in public infrastructure. Japan started to fund private industrial firms with public money, and has to rely on food aid extensively (mostly from the US). However Japan in the 50s also have had large-scale labor and student unrests that reached a peak in 1960 due to high unemployment. China is very dissimilar to Japan in the 50s, perhaps have more similarity to the Japan of 70s. In both cases, a newly highly industrialized economy that focuses on manufacturing of low-to-mid-end goods, and yet have sufficient capital to flex some economic muscle (i.e., acqusition of IBM PC division by Lenovo, Singer, etc), and have high sustained economic growth. Sorry, I took a minor in far east studies in college, and have been fascinated with the Chinese economy since. From a financial market perspective, China has a very speculative market base, quite similar to those in Hong Kong, Taiwan or Korea. Korea's KOSPI derivatives (future and future options) contract remains the most traded derivative contract in the world, with great volatility. As an investor, I am interested in investing in Chinese financial derivatives for the potential volatility and reasonably wealthy population base that has a history of speculation.
I'm a bit confused,as I've seen TV reports wherein people have been turned out of their homes on city outskirts seemingly without compensation and high cost homes/skyscrapers erected.(I suppose it comes down to how property ownership is established).It was also my understanding that the farmers rioted because of encroachment onto their land by developers (aided by regional officials).The basic point I'm driving at is there can't be any real sustainable growth unless the citizens of a country are allowed assets that they can borrow against.It's like the wild west in Russia.In some cases people own the building but not the land and gangsters use arson before trying to claim the land.It's so basic that I wonder about the motivation of (particularly the Russian) government.I'm reluctant to invest as I don't think the population of a country with such a system will continue to tolerate it.
Disclaimer, while I have been a student of China with particular attention to economy for quite some time now (over a decade), my understand is still flawed / coloured by what western historians wrote, native Chinese with a much more accurate information please feel free to correct me. From I understand, the land reform after 1949 Communist victory ("liberation" from PRC point of view) was virtually complete, there are no private ownership of land after the 1954 land reform and formation of Communes similar to those in the Soviet Union. Private ownership returned after 1977-78 (after Deng Xiaoping's rise to power, and initiated the Economic Reform programme), with return of ancestral homes to private ownership, largely in urban and near urban areas, such return is very limited, often to the family compound only, not the agricultural land. The agriculture land, on the other hand, is "leased" (more like divided) to individual rural households ("peasants") as "responsibility land" (the China Central Government's phase), basically a long-term lease with the peasants responsible for contributing to the central government a small quota of the harvest, and keep the rest that can sold in the semi-free markets for additional income. At the present time, due to rapid growth of the urban areas, the encroachment disputes that we have seen on TVs and news reports either deal with the ancestral home ownership or the long-term "responsibility land" lease. The developers are supposed to compensate the owners or official land lessees with adequate monetary compensation. But due to the lack of a fair-price for compensation (and also due to corruption at the regional and provincial level governments, the compensation are often deemed unfair and are subject of much dispute between the developers (the wealthy "elite") and the poor rural residents. In fact, such disputes are one of the main sources of social instability in rural areas (the other major source is the migrant rural workers), and is getting a lot of attention in the Central government. Back to the 70 (or 75?) year lease, it deals with real estate developments on "public" land, China government seem to have copied the Hong Kong model of "leasing" public land for urban devleopment. A fairly good description of Chinese Land reform from a historical point of view (in English): http://www.fao.org/sd/LTdirect/LTan0031.htm I read Shanghai-ist (a Blog by a bunch of US / Canada / European Expats now living in Shanghai) a couple of times a week, it is irreverent fun (like hard to find Sam Adams in Shanghai, yet Heineken is available at every corner store), but also provides a good (unsensored) insight into life in Shanghai, with occasionally surprising social commentary on today's China: http://www.shanghaiist.com/
you are really an expert about china. now in china peasants needn't pay any agricultural taxes.it's indeed a serious problem that the income gap between the city and countryside is becoming larger and larger.the government must try its best to deal with the problem.