After over 3 weeks in Shanghai I feel ready to tell my uneducated, see for yourself, personal point of view.
I read many articles about China's RE bubble. During the passing three weeks I've bumped into a (awfully) silent reminders of it, standing here and there, reminding me of its existence. I've included some pictures and movies below to show you readers some tastes of it. )
This week I will be finishing my work related duties here and will have more time (and energy) to explore some more, I'll try to bring some more pictured evidence.
When I arrived to Shanghai, the first transportation vehicle I used was the Maglev:
As you can see – the speed limit is crazy:
And all of this is for 50 RMB (7.8$) or 40 RMB (6.25$) if you have a flight ticket. Not cheap, but not expensive (at least for westerners). If you choose to go using the subway, you will pay 4 RMB (62 cents).
But there are other things I noticed – although the airport was packed with flights (I arrived close to the weekend), the Maglev train was almost empty. 95% of the seats were empty:
Long after I arrived I talked with friends here about the Maglev and they said that the Maglev is not comfortable and no one uses it. A bit shame for such a huge piece of engineering. I also assume that since you have the Metro for 4 Yuan, why use something that costs 10-12 times more?
You don't have to take my word for it, you can just view other YouTube movies and other pictures over the net to see that the Maglev is mostly empty. This reminds me a lot of what Ido Meroz wrote on his blog post about trains.
Some time after I arrived I went with a friend to eat on the other side of the river. The side that I lived on was Pudong, and the other side is called Puxi. The place I lived in was very close to the center. The area of the river is the heart of Shanghai, it is also very close to the WFC (world financial center).
It was on Aug 23rd, Tuesday, between 20:30 and 21:30. Regular day's evening. The weather was perfect, cool and nice, encouraging everyone to open their windows. I took a few pictures of the gigantic apartment buildings around us, right in the middle of Shanghai. You can see how many lights are lit through the windows. In Israel, the same experiment would have yielded 80-100% of the windows were lit. See for yourself:
Empty Buildings
Coastline empty buildings
ShiMao complex has a "new" building completely empty over a year. You can see it in the center, it is 60 stories high
20% Occupancy??
No lights…
Almost zero occupancy
Someone lives here?
And again, this is not in the middle of nowhere, it is in the middle of one of the largest cities on the face of the earth, one of the busiest cities in the world.
So, see for yourself, do you think there is a RE bubble in China or not?
I talked with a few Chinese co-workers. I told them that I think home prices in China will go lower in the coming years. They all laughed at me and say that they don't think so. As they laughed I smiled my biggest smile back to them. It was not because I like being ridiculed, but because this was EXACTLY the best symptom of a bubble. By thinking that home prices will continue rising forever they just proved my point – there is a bubble. Now it is just a matter of time.
Now that's not all. I've spent some times on the weekends on malls and shopping places around. Till Yaniv mentioned it, I never noticed that the malls are virtually empty. There is no one there ! And it is a weekend ! In Petah-Tikva or Tel Aviv, if you go to a mall on weekend, lets say friday morning-noon and saturday, you are probably crazy – no parking, no place to move. But here – malls are EMPTY.
I went to visit Habbad on one of the Saturday's there. I was asked a very smart question by an American guy. He was surprised to hear that the Chinese government is printing money like crazy. He asked: "So, if they are printing money like you said, why do they cry all the time about the US policy of printing money and devaluing the Dollar?". Smart question. Double standard I guess.
The Chinese are printing money to keep the Yuan value low, fixed at 6.4 Yuan per US$. Since China has a trade surplus, to absorb the excess amount of forex and prevent appreciation of the Yuan, China must print Yuans to buy the forex and create an artificial supply of Yuans. You can read about it on wikipedia.
Money printing is felt everywhere. I remember that one time I went to the Petah-Tikva market to buy some fruits. The sales man showed me three bills of 100 shekels with their serial number ordered. I was so amazed, so nice to see freshly printed money! Well, here it is pretty common. I am here only 3 weeks but I have already saw this twice:
Ordered bills of 100 RMB freshly out of the ATM
Sometimes, you just need to stand on your head to prove everybody else that you are right…
Trying to prove the Chinese guy that there is a bubble by standing on my head
I was lazy lately and my writing "to-do" list has grown very long. After I'll come back from China I will probably flush the to-do list, so stay tuned.
