Chinese city Shenzhen surpassed China Hong Kong,became NO.1 among Guangdong, Hong Kong and Macao

[Pepsi Cola]

So what price do you think Tokyo should have with 37m people, lesser land than Beijing and a GDP of India?

This is the price of a detached house in Tokyo 23 wards, the center core of Tokyo:

Around $6000 per sqm, 使用面积.



Another vested interest of the government there, to protect SOEs.

Other countries' stock market is dominated by institutional investors like investment banks, which invest professionally and long-term.

China's stock market is dominated by retail investors (average man on the street), who invest short-term and based on rumors/speculation looking for a quick buck. So it's like a casino.





So why China doesn't set up investment institutions to invest professionally? Why let the stock market be a casino?

That's because SOEs have lower return on equity and if left to the free market, they would be defeated by private Chinese companies. Capital will flow from SOEs to private companies.

So who gains and who loses from the stock market?

Same for the property market, who gains and who loses?

The absence of institutional investors is simply because there is a low demand for it and there are simply way better investment options in China, such as the property market. Historically, the Chinese stock market has been very volatile and not quite profitable, so the majority did not care as much. Now that there is a curb on the housing market, hopefully, that means more people would experiment with other investment options. The current rally in the Chinese stock market is evidence of that.

 

[Adam WANG SHANGHAI MEGA]

So what price do you think Tokyo should have with 37m people, lesser land than Beijing and a GDP of India?

This is the price of a detached house in Tokyo 23 wards, the center core of Tokyo:

Around $6000 per sqm, 使用面积.



Another vested interest of the government there, to protect SOEs.

Other countries' stock market is dominated by institutional investors like investment banks, which invest professionally and long-term.

China's stock market is dominated by retail investors (average man on the street), who invest short-term and based on rumors/speculation looking for a quick buck. So it's like a casino.





So why China doesn't set up investment institutions to invest professionally? Why let the stock market be a casino?

That's because SOEs have lower return on equity and if left to the free market, they would be defeated by private Chinese companies. Capital will flow from SOEs to private companies.

So who gains and who loses from the stock market?

Same for the property market, who gains and who loses?

Like the Chinese football, the China Stock Exchange has low credibility. The most important thing is the lack of severe punishment and fairer justice system（I do admire US securities regulations very much. Today, you bought a stock. The stock will rise sharply tomorrow. If you can't justify it, the US Securities Commission has reason to sue you for insider trading.
The Chinese stock exchange market needs to have solid evidence (presumption of innocence), and the US stock exchange market requires investors to provide evidence on their own ( guilty until proven innocent ).
This is one of the reasons why China is not a developed country.

Ten cities with the highest housing prices:
Monaco, France,
China Hong Kong,
London, England,
New York, USA
Geneva, Switzerland
Sydney, New Zealand,
Singapore,
Shanghai, China,
Paris France,
Beijing China,

The expensive houses price in super-large cities is normal. Japanese houses have property taxes. Even if you do not live in it, you still have to pay property taxes. You have to pay a lot of fees every year.
Unlike China, China does not currently have a property tax, and there is basically no risk in investing in real estate.

Before the 1930s, the US stock exchange was also frequent involved in insider trading, and frequent cases of non-compliance. After President Roosevelt established a severe punishment system, the American Stock Exchange began to become more fair and reliable from the end of 1930.

 

[Mista]

Even if you do not live in it, you still have to pay property taxes. You have to pay a lot of fees every year.
Unlike China, China does not currently have a property tax, and there is basically no risk in investing in real estate.

They pay property tax but their land is freehold.
You guys don't pay property tax but the land is leased for 70 years.

It's the same at the end.

 

[Adam WANG SHANGHAI MEGA]

They pay property tax but their land is freehold.
You guys don't pay property tax but the land is leased for 70 years.

It's the same at the end.

that would be not our prob any more.

Lands belong to China state is a basical law to maintain China stability,no way to change that(So many chinese dynasties ended up with unstoppable rebellions coz by unstoppable land concentration which means super rich people like Jack MA alone can possess 10% or even 20% of overall China farm lands) ,but the use right can be transfered from one entity to another freely.
Farm lands in China now has three rights ,property right belongs to state,land contract management right and the transfer of use right belong to Chinese farmers who live in that villiage,and President XI supported those three rights priciple strongly.

No one like Jack MA can separate the lands and chinese farmers by any force coz chinese farm lands are not allowed to be sold whatever type it is.


Starve to death or fight the gov to death,both death anyway,what you choose?!

Not good enough but China is making progress day by day!

 

[Mista]

But HK is taking it too far. Neither do they need to pay taxes to Beijing unlike Shenzhen, nor spend tens of billions on military spending annually like Singapore.
They have large surpluses and financial reserves, and a significant amount of these money come from property-related revenue.

The government could sell land at a discount and still have a surplus to fund government operations.

This Trillion-Dollar City Doesn’t Know How Rich It Is

Hong Kongers want their government to loosen its purse strings. The city has shortages of doctors and housing, leaving families with long waits for medical appointments and fueling anxiety over the world’s most expensive home prices. Students fret for their future, unsatisfied with an administration that pays their examination fees for secondary school diplomas though appears reluctant to guarantee more basic needs.

So why doesn’t Financial Secretary Paul Chan do more to ease the burden? After all, Hong Kong posted a budget surplus of HK$58.7 billion ($7.5 billion) for the 2018-19 fiscal year, more than the HK$46.6 billion Chan forecast in February last year.

The reason is that rich Hong Kong, with HK$1.16 trillion in fiscal reserves, doesn’t really know what it can afford.

Two of the city’s biggest sources of taxation, land premiums and stamp duties, are tied to the health of the property market, and thus highly cyclical. Rival Singapore has the advantage of a 7 percent goods and services tax that keeps collecting money even in an economic downturn. While Singapore will raise its GST rate by 2 percentage points between 2021 and 2025, Hong Kong never warmed to a sales levy, concerned a tax that doesn’t distinguish between the rich and the poor will make already-high income inequality worse.

However, when it comes to expenses, rapid aging makes rising healthcare spending a structural feature. The combination of cyclical revenue and structurally determined expenditure is lethal. A working group on long-term fiscal planning delivered the bad news five years ago when it calculated that Hong Kong would go into a permanent fiscal deficit around 2030.

To avoid such an outcome when the property market is buoyant (but wobbly) and GDP is growing 3 percent annually may compel the government to stop making things better: Hospital corridors may overflow with patients during the annual flu season. That’s because the improvement in public services to which Hong Kongers are accustomed will require GDP growth of 5 percent plus. The city’s workforce peaked last year at 4 million. In the absence of more hands at work, hitting and maintaining 4 percent growth consistently will require faster hands. A boost to labor productivity will require spending on economic infrastructure instead.

Hence, 19 references in Chan’s annual budget speech on Wednesday to the Greater Bay Area, a project to knit together Hong Kong and Macau with nine mainland cities. In addition, there were 11 mentions of China’s Belt-and-Road Initiative.

The trouble, as my colleague Nisha Gopalan noted recently, is that the 11-chapter Greater Bay project blueprint doesn’t seem to play on Hong Kong’s British legacy, since its goal is to create “an international and market-oriented business environment based on rule of law, under the jurisdiction and legal framework of mainland China.” As for belt-and-road, Chinese President Xi Jinping’s $1 trillion dream to fashion a Eurasian economy with China at its center is bogged down in canceled deals and suspicion of Beijing’s motives (although Chan’s idea of promoting Hong Kong as a belt-and-road arbitration hub is excellent; there will be plenty of disputes to keep lawyers busy).

To be sure, Hong Kong isn’t limiting its options. There was plenty of emphasis in Chan’s budget on harnessing information technology and boosting research capabilities in Hong Kong. Ultimately, though, the city’s economic future will be determined by how much farther U.S.-China relations slide. Getting caught in the crossfire of mistrust between two large powers may end up being the biggest constraint on what Hong Kong can afford to do for its citizens.

https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/a...budget-surplus-masks-future-fiscal-weaknesses

 

[Mista]

@bbccdd1470

Do you guys invest your fiscal reserves or just collect interest income from it?

https://www.businesstimes.com.sg/go...ong-could-scrap-income-tax-and-prosper-gadfly

 

[name]

Yes, but some young arrogant kids in HK needs to be butt whacked.

propaganda about each village as home as in Vietnam.

 

[bbccdd1470]

@bbccdd1470

Do you guys invest your fiscal reserves or just collect interest income from it?

https://www.businesstimes.com.sg/go...ong-could-scrap-income-tax-and-prosper-gadfly

I'm no financial expert, and IIRR the news stated that our gov't does investment using our fiscal reserves. I think we do both but this could be wrong.

 

[Mista]

I'm no financial expert, and IIRR the news stated that our gov't does investment using our fiscal reserves. I think we do both but this could be wrong.

It seems like HK is being conservative and invest mainly in bonds.

The Hong Kong Monetary Authority investment portfolio is invested primarily in the bond and equity markets of OECD (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development) countries. The target allocation is 71 percent bonds and 29 percent equities. The target currency mix is 91 percent USD- and HKD-denominated assets to 9 percent other denomination assets.

HK can set up sovereign wealth funds to invest the surpluses and collect less land premium like Singapore. You guys have the advantage of not spending on the military.

What's to be done? Leave GST aside. Hong Kong could take a different leaf out of Singapore's playbook: living off assets.

Starting a decade ago, the island state turned its three reservoirs of wealth - the central bank, the sovereign wealth fund GIC, and the state investment firm Temasek Holdings - into the single biggest contributor to government revenue, more than any tax or levy. The annual budget claims up to half of realised and unrealised investment gains. The rest is reinvested.

The last thing Hong Kong needs is a state investment firm to meddle in the economy. But leaving its accumulated fiscal war chest of HK$1 trillion at the central bank's Exchange Fund to earn measly interest income on the world's safest securities is too conservative.

Without risking the Hong Kong dollar's peg to the US currency (which is what the Exchange Fund protects), the city could set aside some of the funds it garners from land premiums and stamp duties to purchase riskier overseas assets.

We are allowed to spend only up to half of the long term average real returns but that still contributed SGD16B to our budget last year. Which means that just our investment income every year is at least SGD30B (HKD174B), slightly more than the total land premiums in HK (HKD143B).

That's how we are able to provide affordable housing because we don't depend on land premiums. In fact spending revenue from land premium is banned by LKY before he stepped down.

 

[Paul2]

The Hong Kong government adopts an extreme greenland protection policy. So many land that can be used is prohibited from being used. In fact, the Hong Kong government has actually no land to build appartments under extreme greenland protection policy, and with a population of 7.45 million, 2 million more than Singapore,the extremely high housing prices in Hong Kong are nothing but very normal!
Hong Kong---extreme greenland protection policy,a little bit too much!!

So much lands not used to low the housing prices!

The development of several green parks can solve the housing problem of Hong Kong's 1 million to 2 million people and actually will not have much impact on the Hong Kong environment.

In fact, 7.45 million Hong Kong people use less land than the 5.61 million Singaporeans.
In fact, Singapore is only about two-thirds of the size of Hong Kong.

I would've ordered to bulldoze the mountain, and build it over with highrises. Then use the rock left from the mountain to fill the Lamma channel for land reclamation, and connecting the HK island with Lantau.