Inside China's High-Tech Dystopia

China Has a Crazy Number of Ghost Cities

The Bay Area is following China's lead to build huge urban centers.  The problem in China is there are no jobs and therefore no people to occupy these High Density Developments.  It is no wonder why China's GDP is teetering.

Western Cities Want to Slow Flood of Chinese Home Buying. Nothing Works.

Western Cities Want to Slow Flood of Chinese Home Buying. Nothing Works.

Governments from Vancouver to Sydney to Toronto are using taxes and other restrictions to tackle real-estate bubbles.


Crowds swept into the Beijing Exhibition Center on a recent morning for a real-estate expo that drew thousands of people interested in foreign property.

That kind of surging interest has created a flood of capital that is washing over cities throughout the globe, distorting home prices, irritating local residents—and defying almost every attempt to restrain it.

In Vancouver, Chinese home-buyers snapped up homes so fast in 2016 that prices escalated at a rate of 30% a month compared with a year earlier. Officials imposed a 15% foreign-buyers tax, and Chinese buyers turned to Toronto, where they soon bid up home prices.

Seeking to curb the market surge in the Toronto area, officials in the province of Ontario introduced their own 15% foreign-buyers tax in April last year.

Chinese buyers had by then begun returning to Vancouver, driving prices to fresh highs in mid-2017 and provoking a new round of measures in February. By May, sales numbers had fallen 35% from a year earlier, but prices, on an adjusted basis, still climbed 11.5%, according to the Real Estate Board of Greater Vancouver.

The hot pursuit of places to park money abroad by Chinese investors drove an estimated $100 billion in property purchases outside China in 2016, according to Juwai.com, a Chinese real-estate website. The buying frenzy, which grew from $5 billion in 2010, helped swell prices for housing and commercial real estate in cities on the Pacific Rim and beyond.

Chinese buyers have scooped up condos, apartments and houses from Vancouver to Auckland to Sydney. While foreign capital was welcome in the years following the financial crisis, officials have found that trying to control the flood of foreign money into housing is like squeezing a balloon: Taxes on foreign buyers in one city only divert them to another spot—and sometimes buyers return, taxes or no taxes.

Governments world-wide “are still at the trial-and-error stage,” said Aaron Terrazas, senior economist at Seattle-based Zillow Group, an online real-estate listing service. “They are trying to figure what works and what doesn’t.”

Officials in Canada and Australia, where relatively affordable homes and large Mandarin-speaking populations attract Chinese buyers, worry the price bubbles threaten their regional economies.

Montreal’s housing market has shown no signs of overheating, but after Valerie Plante was sworn in last year as mayor, she asked provincial officials for authority to tax foreigners buying property in Canada’s second-largest city.

After seeing what happened in Vancouver and Toronto, Ms. Plante worried her city was next. “We need to be very cautious,” a spokeswoman for the mayor’s office said.

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At the Beijing real-estate expo in April, Bao Yingqi of B.Y. Realty, was, in fact, making a pitch for Montreal, saying the city has yet to impose high taxes on foreign buyers. “This makes Montreal stand out for investors,” she said.

Montreal has new housing and an interesting French-speaking culture, Ms. Bao said, who was wearing a black beret. She sat in a booth decorated with a Canadian flag and described Montreal as the “Paris of the West.”

Zhang Yuxing, a 43-year-old Beijing resident, listened. He had planned on Vancouver, but taxes have gone too high.

Now, he said, his top choice is Montreal.

The impact of foreign buyers on home prices isn’t entirely clear, according to analysts and the International Monetary Fund. Low interest rates, liberal immigration policies in Canada and Australia as well as a tight housing supply in some areas also contributed to rising home prices.

Accurately tracking foreign home-buyers isn’t easy, although some local governments can now tally the number of people paying foreign-buyer taxes.

Some purchases aren’t counted, for instance, when foreign buyers hold dual citizenship, or if the transactions are made through companies or local proxies that obscure a buyer’s identity.

In Australia, Jonathan Kearns, the Reserve Bank of Australia’s head of financial stability, said in November that he estimated foreign buyers accounted for 10% to 15% of homes under construction, equal to about 5% of total residential sales in the country.

The share was highest in Melbourne and Sydney, Mr. Kearns said, where foreign buyers accounted for around a quarter of newly built apartments. Around three-quarters of the foreign buyers were from China, he said.

Sydney’s home state of New South Wales doubled its foreign-buyers tax to 8% in July 2017, but that didn’t arrest demand.

The rise in home prices has recently slowed in Sydney and Melbourne, but Chinese developers still dominate foreign investment in residential development across Australia, according to real estate company Knight Frank. Chinese nationals bought $1.5 billion in residential sites last year, about a third of Australia’s total.

Chinese property buying is an “unstoppable juggernaut,” said Jon Ellis, chief executive of Investorist, an online portal for cross-border property transactions.

Outgoing Vancouver Mayor Gregor Robertson described it as the “water bed effect of capital flooding wherever taxes are lowest and regulation is weak.”

For-sale signs in Vancouver feature Mandarin characters. Older abodes are leveled to make way for the construction of new homes, which real-estate agents say Chinese buyers prefer. Bus shelters and benches in Richmond, a suburb south of Vancouver’s airport, carry real-estate ads, also in Mandarin.

Mr. Robertson said rising home prices dominated much of his decadelong tenure. One reason was a lack of coordination among the three main levels of Canadian government—federal, provincial and municipal, he said.

“It’s a complex challenge between regulating offshore investment, local real-estate practices and addressing housing supply within cities, all in sync,” Mr. Robertson said in an interview. “The reality is that interventions take time and aren’t wholly predictable.”

After the first Vancouver 15% tax failed to put a lid on foreign buyers, Mr. Robertson worked with the province of British Columbia on more aggressive steps. In February, province officials raised the foreign-buyers tax to 20% and expanded coverage well beyond Vancouver. Officials also imposed a new levy—0.5% of the property value and climbing to 2% next year—on homeowners who don’t pay income tax in Canada.

In April, British Columbia also announced measures to deter the resale of condo units before construction was completed, to discourage investors from flipping units before they are occupied.

At the Beijing expo, Florence Chan said she originally wanted to buy a home in Vancouver but changed her mind. “The taxes are too high,” she said, adding that Melbourne is looking better.

Chinese buyers like the swanky 661 Chapel Street, a luxury condominium complex in Melbourne.

In December, Aw Sei Cheh, general manager of the project for Malaysian developer Gamuda Land, said Chinese buyers accounted for roughly 10% of sales at the complex, which has private dining rooms, a wine cellar, a theater and a library. Prices start around $410,000 for a one-bedroom, to more than $2 million for three-bedroom units.

One appeal is location. The complex is close to several top universities where some Chinese buyers intend to send their children, Mr. Aw said.

Beijing has tried to limit capital flight, fearing it shakes confidence in the national economy and could potentially weaken the yuan.

A recent crackdown prompted several Chinese tycoons to unwind foreign purchases by their companies acquired in debt-fueled global shopping sprees, including trophy office towers and luxury hotels.

Officially, Chinese citizens are only allowed to exchange no more than $50,000 worth of yuan a year. Yet people in the industry point to loopholes.

Chinese mom-and-pop investors sidestep limits, for instance, by linking real-estate purchases to the college education of children living abroad; buying such luxury goods as Rolex watches in yuan and exchanging them for dollars to use toward property; or friends and family paying to an overseas account.

One desirable target has been the harbor city of Auckland, New Zealand, home to just over a million people.

Auckland was named the world’s hottest city for luxury real estate based on sales in 2015 by a Christie’s International Real Estate survey. Its open-door immigration policy and light regulation of foreign property deals helped drive 63% annual growth in $1 million-plus home sales in 2015.

Last year, a political backlash erupted over complaints that the city had grown too expensive. New Zealand homeownership rates are at their lowest since 1951, national data show; a quarter of residents under 40 own their home compared with half that age group in 1991.

The center-left Labour Party campaigned on housing measures, and once elected in October pledged a ban on foreign speculators buying existing residential property. The new government also wants to reduce immigration.

“We are determined to make it easier for Kiwis to buy their first home so we are stopping foreign speculators buying houses and driving up prices,” Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said at news conference last fall.

House prices initially rose as lawmakers considered restrictions in foreign investment. Benjamin Liu, an agent with Ray White Real Estate in Auckland, said one Chinese buyer booked a flight after hearing about the proposed ban.

Foreign capital is now returning to Canada, driving the latest surge in home prices. Buyers from China and the U.S. have found Victoria, the small capital of British Columbia that sits on an island west of Vancouver.

Victoria was declared the world’s hottest new housing market last year in Christie’s International Real Estate survey, based on a 29% increase in annual sales of million-dollar-plus homes. Single-family homes in the Victoria area hit a record high of about $570,000 in May, up 9% from a year earlier, according to the Victoria Real Estate Board.

“Victoria is experiencing the same rapid growth in housing prices and sales volumes that have strengthened Toronto and Vancouver in recent years,” Christie’s International said in its survey last month. “If Toronto and Vancouver can be a measure, it is likely Victoria will continue to perform well despite [new] regulations” targeting foreign buyers.

Attention has already turned to Malaysia and Thailand, which now tops the list for Chinese buyer inquiries, ahead of the U.S. and Australia, according to Juwai.com. Two years ago, Thailand ranked sixth.

Over the next decade, Juwai.com predicts that Chinese investors will spend $1.5 trillion abroad, as much as half of that in foreign property.

The real-estate portal recently teamed up with JD.com Inc.—one of China’s internet retail giants—to market property in the U.S., U.K., Australia and Canada. At the click of a button, online shoppers can connect with a sales agent who will assist in the purchase of an overseas home.

Write to Paul Vieira at paul.vieira@wsj.com and Dominique Fong at Dominique.Fong@wsj.com

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The Progressive Left openly embrace Authoritarian Politics of China

Editor's Note:  Plan Bay Area is a determined push for the elimination of local control in favor of a strong regional government that is administered by a technical and political elite.  "It is the only way we can effectively fight climate change, solve transportation needs, housing and social equity", they tell us.  "Modern democracy and market capitalism dont work."   Here is an article recently published in the Atlantic.  Check out the funny video following.

Has China Discovered a Better Political System Than Democracy?

“One person, one vote is not the only morally legitimate way to select leaders,” a political theorist says.
Souvenirs of China's leaders, past and presentKim Kyung Hoon / Reuters



ERIC FISH
OCT 28, 2015
GLOBAL


Since the collapse of several authoritarian regimes in the 1980s and 1990s—most notably the Soviet Union—conventional wisdom in political science has held that dictatorships inevitably democratize or stagnate. This wisdom has even been applied to China, where the Communist Party (CCP) has presided over 26 years of economic growth since violently suppressing protests at Tiananmen Square. In 2012, the political theorist and Tsinghua University philosophy professor Daniel A. Bell aroused controversy among many China-watchers for challenging this idea. In several op-eds published in prominent Western publications, Bell argued that China’s government, far from being an opaque tyranny, actually presented a “meritocratic” alternative to liberal, multiparty democracy. In a new book titledThe China Model: Political Meritocracy and the Limits of Democracy, Bell expands on that idea.

“I disagree with the view that there’s only one morally legitimate way of selecting leaders: one person, one vote,” Bell said at a recent debate hosted by ChinaFile at Asia Society in New York.

Bell is under no illusion that China has already perfected its political recipe, admitting that the ideal “China model” is still very theoretical. This involves a “vertical democratic meritocracy,” as he puts it, with open democratic elections at the local level, meritocratic assessment (like China’s civil-service exam) to choose top national leaders, and experimentation in the middle. In this system, local leaders—who handle relatively basic issues—are still accountable to voters. But national leaders, who must handle more complex issues and make tough decisions that may not be popular (like enacting serious climate-change measures), can be chosen based on experience and knowledge without American-style political gridlock or susceptibility to populist approval.

“This is the political ideal that has informed political reform in China over the past 30 years,” Bell said. “But there’s still a huge gap between the ideal and the practice. This ideal is reasonably good though, and can and should continue to inspire political reform in China in the future.”

Bell dismissed views that he’s an apologist for the CCP, saying that the ideal he writes about requires far more transparency, freedoms, and genuine local democracy than exist in China currently: “There’s a problem in China: There are constraints on free speech, people have visa problems, and that’s terrible. In this sense I’m a card-carrying liberal. I look forward to the day when China has much more political speech than it has.”“There’s a very considerable chance that the model of repressive, authoritarian, elite leadership can persist for a long long time.”

But is it reasonable to expect a transition to Bell’s model of a clean, transparent system that doesn’t elect top leaders democratically? The Columbia University political scientist Andrew Nathan, another participant in the debate, said that what makes liberal democracy better than authoritarian models like China’s isn’t the selection of leaders—it’s checking and balancing them once they’re in power. “Daniel has acknowledged what he calls a gap between the ideal and the practice [of China’s political system],” Nathan said. “That gap is not an accident—[it] is produced by the structure of the political system.”

Timothy Garton Ash, a University of Oxford professor who’s spent decades researching communist and post-communist systems, agreed with Nathan. He said that around the 2008 Beijing Olympics, when China still appeared to be evolving toward greater political and social openness, he believed that the country perhaps had cracked a model that could challenge liberal democracy. But then things started moving backward. Now Chinese President Xi Jinping is “bringing all the responsibility back, in a categorical Leninist gamble, to single-party rule.”

The breakneck economic growth that reigned for three decades in China has slowed. GDP, once guaranteed to exceed 8 percent each year, fell to 7.4 percent in 2014 and is expected to continue dropping. Meanwhile, China’s supply of cheap rural labor—essential to the country’s export-led growth model—is drying up and the overall population is rapidly aging. Social circumstances are also shifting, with young Chinese becoming more educated and nurturing aspirations that go beyond mere prosperity. Given these issues, Ash said, the CCP is facing major challenges in maintaining the “performance legitimacy” that’s kept it afloat for decades, and it faces an uphill battle in establishing a political model that bestows “procedural legitimacy.”If there is a coherent China model, it may be more of a “red empire” in which authoritarian leaders choose their successors from a political elite.

“I don’t think the China model yet exists except between the covers of [Daniel Bell’s] book,” Ash added. “For me the question is can [the Chinese] get that—a sustainable model in a complex society that will no doubt be, in many respects, different from classic Western multiparty, liberal democracy. I hope they do because I think the consequences of failure will be disastrous for us all, but I don’t think they’ll get that simply with the methods they’ve so far adopted.”

Nathan said that if there is a coherent China model, it may be more of a “red empire” in which authoritarian leaders choose their own successors from a political elite and remain repressive in order to manage a complex society. “I think actually Daniel and I agree to a considerable extent on what China is today,” Nathan said. “It’s repressive, it’s authoritarian, it’s self-perpetuating. I’m not predicting that it will survive, but I think there’s a very considerable chance that the model of repressive, authoritarian, self-perpetuating elite leadership can persist for a long long time.”

Bell conceded that the drive toward the ideal “China model” is going backward in many ways under the current political tightening, and that rampant corruption within the CCP undermines its potential. But he said Xi Jinping’s anti-corruption campaign is having an effective influence on reining in official graft and abuse of power. He suggested that the aggressive suppression of perceived threats to the CCP coincides with Xi’s turbulent and risky fight against corruption.

“I think once this corruption is dealt with, then I would expect the switch to a gradual openness,” Bell said. “And it’s a testable hypothesis. If in 20 years time China becomes more repressive, we see another Tiananmen Square, then I’m lost and I’ll change my views.”rs of China's leaders, past and present
Kim Kyung Hoon / Reuters

Beijing Boasts of Its "Crucial Role" in UN Plan for Humanity

Beijing Boasts of Its "Crucial Role" in UN Plan for Humanity

Written by  Alex Newman

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For those wondering why the United Nations “2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development” reads suspiciously like a Marxist-Leninist recipe for total global tyranny, at least one of the reasons is becoming clear. It turns out that the Communist dictatorship ruling mainland China played a “crucial role” in setting the 15-year UN plan for humanity, the regime’s officials boasted in Chinese propaganda outlets. Considering Beijing’s brutality and oppression, the influence of the People’s Republic of China over the global plan that will leave “nobody behind” should be troubling — at least to anyone who values liberty and individual rights. Ironically, perhaps, the plot was dubbed the “People’s Agenda.”

Dictators, genocidal maniacs, and other heads of UN member governments will convene at the UN headquarters in New York City this September to rubber stamp the radical agenda. It aims to replace the last 15-year UN plan, dubbed the “Millennium Development Goals,” set to expire this year. Already, the UN is demanding trillions of dollars every year to implement its latest 15-year plan. “All countries and all stakeholders, acting in collaborative partnership, will implement this plan,” declares the document, adopted by "consensus" on August 1 by UN member governments and dictatorships. “We are determined to take the bold and transformative steps which are urgently needed to shift the world onto a sustainable and resilient path. As we embark on this collective journey, we pledge that no one will be left behind.”

UN boss Ban Ki-moon was evidently excited about the agenda. “‘Transforming our World: The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development’ encompasses a universal, transformative and integrated agenda that heralds an historic turning point for our world,” the UN chief said in a statement, falsely claiming that the proposed global “sustainable development” regime was the result of a “truly open, inclusive and transparent process.” “This is the People's Agenda, a plan of action for ending poverty in all its dimensions, irreversibly, everywhere, and leaving no one behind. It seeks to ensure peace and prosperity, and forge partnerships with people and planet at the core. The integrated, interlinked and indivisible 17 Sustainable Development Goals are the people's goals and demonstrate the scale, universality and ambition of this new Agenda.”

The purpose of government, according to America’s Founders and the Declaration of Independence they produced, is to protect the God-given rights of individuals — the rights to life, liberty, property, and the pursuit of happiness; rights self-evidently endowed to each person by his or her Creator. By contrast, the UN’s newly unveiled 17 “Sustainable Development Goals” represent a vision that could not be more at odds with the Founders’ views on government. For instance, under the 17 planks, the UN and its oftentimes savagely brutal member regimes are presented as benign parents or nannies responsible for taking care of young children. Everything from food and education to welfare, healthcare, and jobs is covered under the far-reaching scheme. Bureaucrats are demanding $5 trillion per year — yes, trillion with a t — to implement the plan.  

But why is the nightmarish and costly vision of total government control — a vision so far removed from traditional U.S. ideals about the role of government to safeguard individual rights — so embedded throughout the UN’s latest master plan? It almost certainly has something to do with the nature of the totalitarian-minded regimes that developed it. A key player among those dictatorships was the Communist Chinese autocracy, infamous for forced abortions, censorship, religious and political persecution, the “one-child policy,” terrible pollution, kangaroo courts, brutal tyranny, and of course, murdering more human beings than any other entity in all of human history. And Beijing’s role in the UN agenda is hardly a secret, with Communist Chinese propaganda organs trumpeting it.      

“China has made important contributions to the global efforts in reaching a fair, inclusive and sustainable post-2015 development agenda,” the regime’s deputy permanent representative to the UN, Wang Min, was quoted as saying in a report by the Communist Chinese news and espionage service Xinhua. “China is also very active in putting forward Chinese proposals…. The agreement includes important proposals by China and many other developing countries in numerous aspects.” In the Xinhua article, headlined “China plays crucial role in formulating historic global development plan: envoy,” the Chinese dictatorship is also presented as key player in unifying the UN’s member regimes around the radical agenda.     

Beijing used its vast propaganda bureaucracy in an effort to drum up some semblance of public support for the draconian master plan. The regime’s propagandists, for example, repeated UN talking points, claiming the new agenda was devised “to redefine how the global community works together to tackle poverty and improve living standards while protecting the environment.” Similar language about the UN’s agenda somehow saving humanity and the Earth from evil humans and capitalist exploiters has been touted for months by pro-UN propaganda outlets masquerading as media outlets. Indeed, as The New American reported last month, the UN is currently working on the largest propaganda blitz in its history to try to create at least the impression of some public support for its agenda.  

The Communist Chinese government, which has its operatives at the top of myriad UN agencies, is looking forward to the sustainability planks being rubber stamped next month. “The agreement also lays a sound foundation for a successful summit on development in September,” said Wang, the dictatorship’s deputy UN representative. “China looks forward to the successful adoption of the Post-2015 Development Agenda at the UN Summit on Development, and this will help promote the international community to further focus on the development agenda and create a better international environment for the development of developing countries and the common prosperity of the world.”

In recent years, the Chinese dictatorship and its autocratic allies have become increasingly vocal in demanding an empowered, more totalitarian UN. From global wealth redistribution to a global currency, the regime continues to push for what it often describes as a “New World Order” — an order with a neutered United States and a powerful UN that is more responsive to the demands of Third World autocrats. Those sentiments mesh well with the latest UN master plan. For example, “Goal 10” on the list is “Reduce inequality within and among countries.” Goal 12, meanwhile, declares that the UN and its member regimes must “Ensure sustainable consumption and production patterns.” If those planks sound suspiciously Communist-inspired, they should.     

You and your family are in the UN’s crosshairs, too, as the document itself makes clear. “This is an Agenda of unprecedented scope and significance,” the agenda boasts. “It is accepted by all countries and is applicable to all.” That, of course, means you, too — and lest you think you might escape the “sustainability” agenda, the text mentions on at least five occasions that nobody, not a single human being, will be left “behind.” So while it may be touted as the “People’s Agenda,” based on the UN’s own documents, the “people” will have no choice about whether or not they wish to participate in the UN’s grandiose plans. Again, it is “applicable to all,” and “no one will be left behind.”

But for those Americans who wish the UN and its member regimes would leave them and their liberties alone, the American Sovereignty Restoration Act would withdraw the U.S. from the UN while removing the dictator club’s headquarters from U.S. soil.