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Chinese Economy Is Increasingly Dependent on Real Estate Market

Security Times reported that, in the first 11 months of 2018, the sales of housing reached 12.95 trillion yuan ($1.94 trillion), breaking the 10 trillion mark for the third consecutive year. In the article, it stated that, as the real estate industry has been growing, domestic economic land dependence has become more and more serious. Looking at the ratio of housing sales revenue to GDP over the years, in 2017, the ratio reached 16.16 percent. This data means that real estate generated approximately 16 yuan per 100 yuan of GDP.

In 2009, the domestic housing sales ratio and the ratio of real estate development investment to GDP, both exceeded 10 percent for the first time in history. It is known that 2009 was the first year that the 4 trillion economic stimulus plan was launched. Between 2008 and 2017, sales of housing only declined. In 2014 and in 2017 it increased by more than 433 percent compared to 2008, while total real estate investment surged to nearly 11 trillion yuan in 2017, an increase of 252 percent.

According to the National Bureau of Statistics, sales of housing in the first 11 months of 2018 reached 12.95 trillion yuan, an increase of 12.1 percent. If we use 10 percent of the growth in housing sales for the full year of 2018 and a GDP growth rate of 6.5 percent, the ratio of housing sales to GDP would have reached a record 16.7 percent last year. Meanwhile according to the statistical data, in recent years, the ratio of state-owned land use rights as a percentage of national finance revenue, has continued to exceed 20 percent, or even 34 percent. Taking 2017 as an example, the state-owned land use rights transfer accounted for 28.97 percent of the national fiscal revenue. This data means that the government has generated 29 yuan per 100 yuan in revenue from sale of the land.

Source: Security Times, January 18, 2019
http://news.stcn.com/2019/0118/14807368.shtml