Property in China

The BBC gives some details on buying property in China.

"I'm quite satisfied with it because I didn't have to accept what I was given by other people. I could make my own choice," says Mr Yang.

His words express how many Chinese feel about going up the property ladder, leaving behind dingy apartments allocated by work-units under China's defunct Communist welfare system.


His old home in the southern city of Kunming was doled out when he was a junior civil servant, low down the perks list.

Mr Yang is still no Donald Trump, despite his high-roller decorating habits. But like millions of middle-class Chinese, he and his wife are pouring their savings into a newly built flat and have taken on a hefty mortgage for the first time.

Buying a house for the first time. Sounds familiar, despite what I was told about Chinese culture. It looks like Chinese want to own their own homes and live by themselves just like Americans do, even if that means getting involved in a system barely a decade old.