蜡笔小新第二部:Affordable housing tests Beijing's mettle

来源：百度文库编辑：九乡新闻网时间：2024/04/28 22:40:50

Affordable housing tests Beijing's mettle

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China did not meet its target last year of building 5.8 million affordable homes for people shut out of the property market by runaway prices. This year, the central government has set a target of 10 million, which raises the question of how it can possibly achieve it, given that it lacks direct control over most spending on the affordable housing programme.

Beijing's answer is to try to exert more authority. Housing vice-minister Qi Ji told the annual session of the National People's Congress that local governments had been asked to put no less than 10 per cent of net income from land sales - worth nearly three trillion yuan last year - into the programme. If they did not, Beijing would investigate and ask local officials to explain.

Local government is a major part of the problem. Starved of tax revenues, which are heavily biased towards the central and provincial governments, local officials have resisted attempts to curb property prices and build affordable homes. Instead, they have used land sales for revenue to finance social programmes and infrastructure investment.

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As a result, government, developers and banks have an interest in rising property rices, and urban housing tends to be geared towards the well-off. Rocketing prices in mainland cities have put the dream of owning a home increasingly beyond the reach of the politically sensitive middle class.

But local government alone is not to blame for the way development of the housing market has contributed to a growing rich-poor gap, leading to public discontent perceived as having the potential to undermine social stability.

After reforms in 1998 that replaced welfare-based allocation of housing with a commercialised market, the government set a goal of most families being able to buy or rent private homes, without setting a target for subsidised housing. But the market has failed to deliver.

A growing wealth gap masked by urban affluence has to be seen against the background of urbanisation. Counting migrants and new entrants to the workforce, more than 20 million people a year need new, affordable housing in addition to those already shut out of the market.

In his policy speech to the congress, Premier Wen Jiabao admitted that his government had "not yet fundamentally solved" a number of issues causing great resentment, such as income disparity, corruption and other problems.

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The way the housing market has developed is symptomatic of them all. Affordable housing is a critical social factor in China's rapid development. Local governments are only part of the problem. Beijing needs to pay more attention to land use and housing generally. There has to be more provision for a decent standard of accommodation for people moving off the land.

On the sidelines of the NPC session, delegates were critical of the affordable housing programme, and some market insiders doubt its feasibility given that Beijing does not hold all the purse strings. But any move to redirect local governments' activities towards meeting people's housing needs is a step in the right direction. If it does not produce early results, that will be an urgent signal of the need for stronger intervention and policies to address wider structural problems. (SCMP)

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