The Communist virus (Wuhan pneumonia) plague has hit the mainland economy hard, especially in the traditionally industrial cities of the north. Some believe the plague will accelerate the migration of people from the north to the south of the mainland in search of more jobs.
The Wall Street Journal on May 10 quoted analysts as saying that the plague has added to the already divergent economies of the north and south of the mainland.
Northern and central China, which have more traditional heavy industrial infrastructure such as coal mines and steel mills, have seen young people leave in droves as their economies have lagged behind other cities and urban dynamism has waned, especially in the northeast.
Firstrade reported on March 15 that the average unit price of second-hand homes in February in various cities on the China Housing Price Quotation Platform showed that five of the 10 cities with the lowest prices were from the northeast, namely Hegang, Shuangyashan, Qitaihe, Liaoyuan and Tieling. The reason for the depressed housing prices is the depletion of urban resources and population exodus. According to Professor Yi Baozhong of Northeast Asia Research Institute of Jilin University, some resource-depleted cities in the northeast have little new demand for real estate, mainly due to underdeveloped industries and a large population exodus.
According to the statistical bulletin of Hegang City, at the end of 2019, the city’s total household population was 985,000, including 802,000 people in urban areas. Compared with 2013, the total population of Hegang has decreased by 93,000 or 8.6% in 6 years.
Zhang Bo, branch director of 58 Anju Room Property Research Institute, said that as the threshold for household registration continues to be lowered around the city and the proportion of the population flowing into the five major urban clusters continues to rise, the overall population of the northeast region shows a pattern of greater outflow than inflow.
According to analysts quoted in the Wall Street Journal, the economic impact of the epidemic has magnified the problem of regional disparities in China, giving people more incentive to leave the mainland’s industrial hinterland and head south in search of better employment opportunities, and this long-term trend of regional migration is likely to remain unchanged.
Zhu Jiajia, a real estate agent in Shenzhen, was quoted as saying that more and more friends and relatives from his hometown have been moving south in recent years, either to find better jobs or to live in warmer climates, or to send their children to better schools.
Vincent Shu, who works as a copywriter in Hong Kong, said he plans to have his parents move from Nanjing to live with him in Shenzhen when he retires. But the move is a personal decision.
Shu, 30, bought an apartment of about 56 square meters in Shenzhen in 2019 for 2.8 million yuan. He believes that on a macro level, job opportunities and salaries are much better in the south
Many people migrate to cities with better economic development in the south, pushing up housing prices in those areas, the report said. In Shenzhen, for example, the city’s population surged 28 percent between 2010 and 2019 to 13.4 million people. Data from the Communist Party’s National Bureau of Statistics show Shenzhen’s second-hand home prices rose 14 percent year-on-year in 2020, and Zhu said the value of her home has risen 4.5 times since she bought it in 2012.
Yan Yuejin, research director of the think-tank center of Shanghai’s E-House China R&D Institute, said several southern provincial capitals have seen a relatively large net inflow of talent, which has pushed up housing demand.
The National Bureau of Statistics of the Communist Party of China (NBSC) previously announced that in March, prices of second-hand homes rose year-on-year in 50 of 70 large and medium-sized cities. for the whole of 2020, only 43 large and medium-sized cities saw an increase in the prices of second-hand homes.
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