Last week, commuters riding the inaugural service on Line 7 of Shanghai’s metro railway were startled by an unusual onboard protest by a young man in his 20s. The unidentified man unfurled a portable tent emblazoned with slogans about high property prices, which had impeded his marriage plans — since no girl would consider him if he didn’t own an apartment.
“I haven’t an apartment, but I do have a brand new tent,” the slogan proclaimed, advertising his eligibility in the marriage market.
As with most public protests in China, this one too was snuffed out swiftly. But the mood of simmering anger among the post-1980s generation of China’s young adults over unaffordably high property prices in the big cities is finding expression in countless other, unusually creative ways.
In Shanghai clubs, for instance, a rock-and-roll band belts out a mocking number called Shanghai Bu Huan Ying Ni (Shanghai Doesn’t Welcome You), a satirical take-off on last year’s Beijing Olympics-theme welcome song.
Its lyrics are a searing commentary on how “you’re not welcome in Shanghai unless you’re moneyed” and how, in preparation for next year’s Shanghai Expo, the poor are being “sent packing” to make way for buildings for rich people.
In China, “one does not need to look far to find evidence of unaffordable housing,” point out Standard Chartered economists, Stephen Green and Jinny Yan. Household incomes are not rising as fast due to global financial crisis, yet “average house prices continue to surge.”
According to E-house, a real estate research firm, average property prices in Tier 1 cities in China — including Beijing, Shanghai and Shenzhen — are 40% higher than in 2007. In response to last year’s crisis, the Chinese government embarked on a $585 billion fiscal stimulus program, coupled with an exceedingly loose monetary policy; and a healthy dose of the massive, state-directed bank lending found its way into the property market.
Economists have flagged the risk of an overheated property market owing to excess liquidity. “You are likely seeing signs of asset price inflation,” says Dragonomics Research and Advisory managing director Arthur Kroeber.
Popular angst among fang nu (‘house slaves’) — or people who feel ‘enslaved’ for life by their mortgage burden — has found expression even in popular culture in the form of a Chinese-language television serial, titled Woju (Snail House), which enjoys a huge following.
The storyline revolves around two sisters, both of whom belong to the post-1980s “happiness generation”, so called because they were born when China’s economy took off and did not know the trials of an earlier generation. The elder sister is a hard-working office worker who dreams of owning an apartment, but cannot afford to. Her younger sibling senses her anguish, gives up her true love and becomes the mistress of a corrupt official— just to make money to make her sister’s dream come true.
Since it started airing in July, the series has proved enormously popular, with some 30 million video views online, and triggered a loud online buzz among the post-1980s generation who empathise with the characters.
But the storyline was evidently a little too brutally honest for
Chinese officials, and the government has ordered that the script be submitted for another round of censorship.
However, property developers defend of rising prices. Beijing party official and property tycoon Ren Zhiqiang argues that if the post-1980s generation could afford to buy houses, “property prices in China are probably too low.” In developed economies, he claims, “people under age 30 can almost never afford to buy a house.”
Pointing out that in pre-reform-era China, workers were assigned a house by their work unit only at age 40, he asks:“Why do today’s young people want to surpass their parents’ generation — and that too by asking parents to make the down payment on their apartment?”
While unveiling the stimulus package in November 2008, Chinese leaders had indicated that nearly a fourth of it would be earmarked to build “welfare housing units”, and offer them at low rents. But, not much has been spent and not many people have benefited
from it.
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