[827a]

> without Chinese construction powress

We need to be honest in calling this what it is: yes the Chinese have incredible construction capacity, but the far bigger reason why their cities are growing so fast is because: they essentially have zero personal or corporate property rights in urban zones.

[seanmcdirmid]

That really isn’t true though, nail house term was invented in China after all. The only real magic is simply their ability to get sh*t done on time and on budget, which doesn’t exist in the USA anymore.

[handle584]

> nail house term was invented in China after all

I do not see how this is related to property rights? In urban China you do not own your home, it is a 70yr right to use the land.

Some of their construction is good, but not private homes. Because you do not own the land, the quality of your home is up to the developer, who basically follows no code and cheapens out on everything. Also the Chinese code is very loosely implemented, for it lacks basic insulation and ventilation to start with, let alone modern airtightness.

Anyone grew up in sfh like those in the US will not like to live in Chinese nail houses.

[seanmcdirmid]

First, property rights are a thing in China, early on local governments ignored them and the central government came down hard on that (hence nails houses that wouldn’t exist in the USA because we have eminent domain here). Second, the leases are assumed to be renewed, and there are many different lengths from 30-40 years to older ones to 99 years for the ones today (not sure wheee you get 70 years, I’m sure thats a duration that was used in some city as well). When the shorter Wenzhou leases came due, the local government planned to just seize the property but the central government again came down hard on that, forcing them to do small renewal fees instead.

I’m sure China will eventually replaces leases with a property tax that would do the deprecation gradually and continuously like in the west rather than all at once.

I’ve lived in Chinese flats for 9 years and had no problem with them. Sure the nail houses are older less dense constructions that were decrease before local governments built roads around them, but absolutely nothing changed for the residents except for the road.

[handle584]

Ah my bad, my brain was reading Snail House [0], a popular fiction that got adapted to an even popular tv series and its theme is on living in Chinese apartments.

While nail house is the Chinese version of holdout [1], and it exists everywhere. In China it is never regarded positively but always linked with forced eviction [2]. The eminent domain rule requires market rate compensation, which is not possible in many cases because of state ownership and the dual rural-urban land system. It is basically how China financed its growth for around three decades, get rural lands paying out penny, then sell it to some developer for a fortune.

For the land use right duration I believe it has always been 70 yrs [3]? Renewal or not is not a big problem right now, because real estate took off in the 90s, so we still have four decades to go and see.

For foreigner China can be a bit on the rosier side, because of their subtle reverse-racism? Like in universities the dorm for international students is better than the domestic ones, and where expats live is usually a nicer part of the town. Nevertheless, among my Chinese colleagues one the top reasons for immigrating to US is always better and cheaper housing. A couple years back I was surprised to learn that a modest ~700 sqft apartment in Shanghai or Peking easily went for $1M! Since then they had an almost 50% crash post covid but still, impressive.

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dwelling_Narrowness

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holdout_(real_estate)

[2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Land_requisition_in_China

[3]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Property_law_in_China#Obtainin...

[seanmcdirmid]

Uhm, China is a bunch of local jurisdictions with wildly different polices and details. So even in the same province, the rules between different cities could be different, hmm, often there are differences even in cities if they have rural areas.

Here is the nytimes article about the Wenzhou leases, they were 20 years (I got that detail wrong):

https://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/26/business/china-wenzhou-la...

China did forced evictions back in the 90s and they were received very poorly, so they whiplashed in the other direction of never doing forced evictions. Western media just focuses on the former though, not the corrections.

I am as much as a critic about China as I defend it. Its problems are overbuilding, the hukou system is still trash, no property tax that would discourage speculation and empty apartments, etc… But property rights are still strong, the government feels it’s very important, and development occurs at a rapid clip, the China I left 10 years ago is already very different and no longer as poor.