China Tells

Recently a graph from JP Morgan has caught the attention of Chinatells. According to the stats compiled by JPM, China’s residential land price change (YoY) has always lagged that of GDP, until end of 2009/beginning of 2010. Since then, the land price increase has surpassed that of GDP increase.

Such a chart is consistent with Chinatells’ observation that housing price (partially pushed up by land price) has gone up at a particularly fast pace since the end of 2009. As Chinatells has long argued, the ever increasing housing price in China is one of the most important factors to curb average household from consuming more. According to a study conducted by China’s Academy of Social science, Chinese households’ average saving ratio is stably around 50% in the last 10 years, if the revenue of property sales is added back to the household saving. In other words, the currently observed downtrend in Chinese households’ saving ratio reflects the fact that average Joe’s consuming power has been largely crippled by the ever increasing housing price.

To put it simple, if the government is serious about boosting the domestic consumption and try to grow the economy more towards consumption lead, then housing price (related land price) is one of the critical issues to address before we see the transition of economic growth mode to happen.

最近中国通注意到JP Morgan一张图表。该图表显示，自09年底以来，中国住宅用地的价格年增长率首次超过国民生产总值的年增长率。这个落差在过去10年绝无仅有，显示了09年以来地价上涨的夸张程度。相应的，房价的上涨也顺理成章，成为压在城市居民背上一座难以撼动的负担。根据中国社科院最近的一项研究，高企的房价已经成为阻碍中国广大家庭增加消费的重要因素之一。联想到最近政府领导发出指示要减少经济增长对于出口和投资的依赖，并且增加消费对于经济增长的促进作用，那么改革房价已经成为最紧迫的需要解决的问题之一。