on longterm planning, it is heart-warming to see how parents try to do better for their kids, way before they are born
I had purchased two sets of Chinese language classic books of the usual more than a decade before the Coconut came along, and never even thought about having a Jack. One set in comic strip form, and the other the formal text form.
Journey to the West en.wikipedia.org
Water Margin en.wikipedia.org
Romance of the Three Kingdoms en.wikipedia.org
Art of War en.wikipedia.org
Yue Fei biography en.wikipedia.org
Spring & Autumn Annals en.wikipedia.org
Annals of Warring States gutenberg.cc
Dream of the Red Chamber (when the kids are much older, near adult) en.wikipedia.org
Planning is not just a word, and sacrifice is not only a concept.
Love location-location-location discipline.
bloomberg.com
Why Anxious Parents Are Driving a Home Price Surge in China
24 June 2021, 21:45 GMT+8
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How do you get into a good public school in China? Start with $1 million, spend years preparing and get lucky.
A few months ago, Wang Xuetao bought an apartment so run down its concrete walls were crumbling. If all goes right, Wang’s bet will ensure her offspring enroll in one of Beijing’s most sought-after public schools, a path to staying in the middle class. It means seven years living in a 71-square-meter (764-square-foot) apartment built in the 1960s around the time of Mao Zedong’s great famine.
With that lined up, her next step is to get pregnant.
Wang Xuetao in her apartment undergoing renovation in Beijing.
Photographer: Qilai Shen/Bloomberg
“The location of this apartment can help my child secure a good elementary school,” said Wang, who spent about $800,000 on the apartment. “The planning takes years because I’m not someone who can easily come up with that kind of money.”
Wang is part of a trend sending home prices soaring in pockets across China and alarming the officials, now weighing how to intervene. While U.S. families have spent the pandemic fleeing cities and spreading out in suburban houses, their Chinese counterparts are racing to bid up densely packed flats near good public schools.
In the U.S., property near good public schools command higher prices, but parents can chose to rent to secure a slot. In China, many districts now require people to own the homes years in advance -- for example, in the Xicheng area where Wang lives, it’s at least six years.
China’s scale means the frenzy of potential bidders is vast: About 18 million students enroll in the public primary school system every year, and only about a fifth of them make it into university.
To ensure their children can have access to better schools -- often concentrated in big cities such as Beijing and Shanghai -- people like Wang have sent prices in the metropolises soaring. Next to Zhongguancun No. 3 Primary School, one of the city’s top five, Fengniao Residential Compound saw prices jump 31% from a year earlier, real estate platform Anjuke data shows.
In Beijing’s Yuetan area -- close to another top school -- parents typically buy an apartment 58% more expensive than their older one, but get 30% less space, according to KE Holdings Inc.
Both cities rank among the most expensive of 80 global mega-cities, according to real estate services company E-House (China) Enterprise Holdings Ltd.
The situation is especially dire in Shanghai. Prices for housing in the city’s popular school districts spiked by 20% on average in the year through March, according to local property data provider Urban Surveyors.
The asking price of a two-bedroom apartment in the city can easily reach $3.6 million, almost double the median value of U.K.’s least affordable property markets in Kensington and Chelsea, according to local agents.
School-district housing “has become a hard currency,” said Chen Sheng, president of the China Real Estate Data Academy. “There’s both real demand and it makes sense as an investment.”
Wang’s neighborhood in Beijing.
Photographer: Qilai Shen/Bloomberg
Policy Tightening
Wang’s desperation is so widely shared among China’s growing middle class that the government is pushing out a vast array of policies to rein in prices. Measures range from requirements that people hold a local residency permit to paying personal income tax for a minimum five years to qualify as a buyer. Now, authorities are warning parents that proximity won’t guarantee a spot for their children.
Even President Xi Jinping has weighed in, noting during China’s annual legislative congress in March that property prices near good schools are out of whack and vowing to tackle inequality in education.
“This goes far beyond property curbs. It’s also about education reform,” said Chen Jie, a professor specializing in property research at Shanghai Jiao Tong University. “It’s an experiment to equalize opportunities for kids from different social economic backgrounds.”
Huge Enrollment Change
Chinese cities rolled out measures after the president voiced concerns on elevated home prices near popular schools
Source: Government statements
The new policies are creating an additional layer of trouble for parents like Molly Zhu. She swapped her large Shanghai apartment for a smaller, million-dollar fixer-upper for her 3-year-old son. Yet two months later, the new unit’s valuation was hit due to new rules suggesting that property ownership wouldn’t guarantee enrollment in schools.
“This is the first time where my life is more dramatic than a TV show,” said Zhu, who quit her job as a civil servant and became a import and exports trader to pay back her mortgages. “It seems like I live in a world with never-ending policy changes.”
Delicate Balance
Her plight shows the delicate balance the government needs to maintain. Authorities are trying to moderate property prices without triggering a collapse that could also lead to a public backlash. A lack of investment options means Chinese families have around 78% of their wealth tied up in property, more than double that of the U.S., according to a 2019 study by Chengdu’s Southwestern University of Finance and Economics.
For now Wang is sticking to her plans and will use her experience as an interior designer to transform her decades-old residence.
“For weeks we kept swiping property listing apps non-stop, joking we almost went blind, and suddenly this one turned up,” Wang said. “We really picked a hidden gem.”
— With assistance by Allen K Wan, Emma Dong, and Pratish Narayanan
(Updates with details about ownership rules and home price increases)
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