i must be missing something; i don’t see the bbc mentioned anywhere here.

But at what cost?

Thing is bad because homes are supposed to be speculative value, not for you to live in and enjoy your own personal space!

I find Western reporting on China always follows the pattern of looking at something that’s happening in China, and then transplanting it into the context of western capitalism. And then they come up with these conclusions how China’s economy is surely dying because if that happened in the west there would be an economic crash. They’re incapable of acknowledging the fact that China has a different economic system, and to do any meaningful analysis, you actually have to use that as the context.

Stop paying your land taxes and see how long you’re the owner of said land.

Keep in mind that China does not have such taxes, because the “lease right” is their version of land tax. It’s literally the same system, except the leases are paid up front and for 90 years (iirc), so it’s inherently more secure for people’s personal homes.

Where do you get all those ridiculous nazi propaganda articles you keep posting from? They’re even more unhinged than the stuff the other nazis post. Do you go dumpster diving behind the cia hq to fish out the ones they deemed too unbelievable and threw away?

Ah, another armchair legal scholar who learned property law from a John Locke coloring book. Let me gently unpack the nonsense here.

You claim that state ownership of land is somehow unique to China and not comparable with anything we know in the West. This is either breathtaking ignorance or deliberate dishonesty. Eminent domain exists in every Western country. In the United States, the government can seize your property for a shopping mall under Kelo v. New London. In the United Kingdom, compulsory purchase orders are routine. In Germany, the state can expropriate land for public projects with minimal compensation. The difference is that in China, the state owns the land upfront, while in the west the state has the same powers but with extra steps.

A 70-year land use right for residential property, registered and transferable, is functionally equivalent to freehold in every practical respect. It can be bought, sold, mortgaged, and inherited. I fail to see how that matters for living your life. Meanwhile, in the liberal ‘democratic’ model you idolize, speculation and hoarding have made housing unaffordable for an entire generation. People have homes. Your model has literal homeless encampments in every major city. But please, tell me more about how ‘ownership’ is superior when it leaves millions of people on the street.

Your claim that the state can revoke these lease rights at any time is false both in law and in practice. The Land Administration Law and the Property Law of China provide clear procedures for expropriation, requiring public interest justification and compensation, this is actually a stronger protection than eminent domain provides in most western countries. The idea that the state just kicks people out arbitrarily is a myth repeated by trolls who have never bothered to read the statutes. Yes, there have been abuses, just as there are abuses of eminent domain in the West.

Now run along and do your hamfisted trolling elsewhere.

Land is collectively owned, and distributed on this basis. This is why the majority of people in China are housed, and there’s an incredibly small homeless population. You’re conflating home ownership as an investment vehicle with home ownership as a means of survival.

Further, China is democratic, more than most western countries as seen by each country’s own people.

Uh what you refer to as nominal possession is called a 70 year old residential lease of the land (one still owns the building on top), I’m not personally aware of many Chinese people who’ve owned a house for 70 years either but anyways there is debate on whether there should be fee on renewing the 70 year old lease or whether it should be automatically renewed but in either case property tax on inheritance isn’t a bad thing.

Anyways yeah, the US is famous for always having respected personal property and not steamrolling entire neighborhoods of minorities to build roads and companies who further pollute the surroundings without moderation.

Plus, I’d much much rather prefer that all the houses in a country eventually go back to the state after use for redistribution, instead of to private corporations like Blackrock and Blackstone which can then turn housing into a speculation market to turn people who want shelter into cash cows, don’t know about you but the former is increasingly sounding like the more democratic option.

apartments are sad excuses for homes

Hard disagree. They offer living spaces without urban sprawl, which is both a comfort for its inhabitants (fuck no I don’t want to drive anywhere, let me be there to begin with), for the city (no need for 8 lane highways everywhere), but also a boon for the environment (fuck cars).

American take, more like

Renting isn’t owning is a pretty good take because it is factually true, and yes, 9 in 10 families in China OWN a home, not rent it.

Apartments are sad excuses for homes is ridiculous, would you rather live in suburbia hell? A nice apartment complex with facilities like gyms, green spaces, gardens, cafes and near public transport is many many times superior to an independent house in the middle of concrete hell, in fact people pay far far extra for luxury apartments like these than random independent houses.

Which is to say yes, apartments can be objectively better than independent homes, forget them not being able to be counted as shelter.