A good take on the Chinese property adjustment from TSLombard.
Upon becoming General Secretary of the Communist Party in November 2012, Xi Jinping announced the goal of his leadership would be the “China Dream”, the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation. Reporting at the time from Beijing, Evan Osnos, staff writer for The New Yorker, highlighted how that political slogan resonated with the typical Chinese citizen. He quoted his elderly neighbour, a Mrs Jin, as telling him: “Chairman Xi has two big ideas. One of them I can’t remember, but the other is the China Dream.” She added: “What’s my China Dream? To live a few more years in my house.”
In the minds of millions of Chinese families, the China Dream has over time become associated with living in one’s own home – the main aspiration of many families. What it means for the country’s Communist Party leadership is more complicated. On one level, it represents an unwritten social compact between the people and the Party: the regime delivers the economic growth to help people realize their dreams while the people accede to the Party’s monopoly of political power. To paraphrase my colleague Jonathan Fenby: as long as the vast majority of workers are able to experience economic advancement via rising incomes and to transform their savings into homes of their own, they will be unlikely to challenge the political status quo. This basic regime quid pro quo is now being challenged like never before.
