Housing construction
It is an important objective of the Chinese government to promote economic development and launching building developments is an important way of doing this. However, property development in China is vastly outgrowing the number of people who can purchase new homes, concerning many sociologists who argue that it is leading to a deepening of social divisions in the country. However it is expected between 2009 and 2030, China will add further 850 million people to its middle class. According to a study by McKinsey, 54 percent of China's urban households were considered "mass middle" class in 2012 but will increase to 76 percent of China's urban population by 2022. Due to a growing number of higher-paying high-tech and service industry jobs, 54 percent will also be classified as "upper middle" class. The new future surge in additional upper middle class earns more than the "mass middle class" , and hence is able to afford higher rent, more consumption and indicates a possibility that this new rise in unprecedented forecasted number of "upper middle class" may be able to better match the large number of property developments in the future. Many apartments, hotels and shops remain empty for years being called ghost cities or ghost malls, with many Chinese unable to afford them. As ''The Economist'' says, "If there is one thing that annoys the man on the Beijing omnibus, it is the cost of housing in China's cities." However, ghost cities in China have had an under-reported degree of success in filling up. According to Wade Shepherd, after the ghost cities becomes a thriving city, they no longer become a much talked about topic in the western media. Ex-ghost cities are rarely news compared to when they were ghost cities. Wade says, "It generally takes at least a decade for China’s new urban developments to start breaking the inertia of stagnation. But once they do, they tend to keep growing, eventually blending in with the broader urban landscape and losing their “ghost city” label." This issue of cost of housing in China, was not applicable to the housing market pre-1978 in China. Before the 1970s, the construction of housing in China was sacrificed for the development of industries and industrial growth. The construction of the housing industry only received a small portion of state-allocated funds to continue to develop the industry. Low rents for urban housing were enticing to many people, causing the available housing to be rented out quickly, giving the state little money for the precious space they are renting out. This led to a shortage of housing and a shortage of funds to build more housing. Between the years of 1995 and 2015, the total investment allocated to the housing industry from the Chinese government has increased from a cap of 50,000 yuan to a cut-off point of 5 million yuan, showing a renewed interest in housing development in recent years from the Chinese government after years of limited funding towards the urban housing projects. The Chinese government announced in March 2011 the objective of building 36 million units of housing by 2015. In September 2011 alone, work commenced on 1.2 million units across China; a 70% increase in the construction of social housing compared with 2010 construction. By 2014, Chinese builders have added 100 billion square feet of housing space in China, equating to 74 square feet per person. Construction of urban housing was a major undertaking. The country has shown a major shift in allocating funds and resources to housing their people, building over 5.5 million apartments between the years of 2003 and 2014 in China's cities. These construction projects assigned by the state influence the construction job market in China as well. In 2014 alone, 29 million people were employed in urban construction businesses around China.Property bubble
The 2011 estimates by property analysts state that there are some 89 million empty properties and apartments in China, and that housing development in China is massively oversupplied and overvalued, and is a bubble waiting to burst with serious consequences in the future. TheSee also
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