China Tells

Does China have a property bubble? If so what stage is the bubble at? Will the bubble burst? These are questions that have been debated repeatedly among scholars and market observers, yet with strong divided opinions. One of the reasons for the divided views is that it seems quite difficult to agree on the facts to start with. Take the construction pace, for example. Different sources have different estimates on how many houses are currently being built by China now. GMO, for example, estimates that China has been increasingly constructing houses (expressed in floor space of million square meters) since 1999, and China might be well building more than 4.5 Billion square meters in 2011, the highest ever achieved in history. Does that sound familiar to be a precedent of a property bubble that is about to collapse? Certainly it could be a red flag if the figure is reliable.

中国的房地产泡沫是众人喜欢争论的话题之一。中国到底有没有房地产泡沫？如果真的有，泡沫有多大，何时会破裂？不同的人有不同的解读。最近GMO一份研究指出，中国在过去几年每年完成的房屋面积逐年增加，并估计2011年全国房产总修建面积可超过45亿平方米。如果这个数字可靠的话，那么我们可能离泡沫的极限已经不远了。