Soaring home prices in China and perceived unfair treatment under the Chinese household registration system (Huji) are two of the main grievances driving millions of aspiring young Chinese workers and college graduates out of China’s biggest cities and back to their home towns, their dreams of making a life in a first tier metropolis harshly crushed. Many young Chinese dream of relocating to “Bei-Shang-Guang,” short for the three cities young Chinese most seek to live in: Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou. However, soaring living expenses and brutal home prices are causing young graduates to give up on their hopes of life in a first tier city; many are now opting to try second tier cities or return home altogether.

To second tier cities or return home
“If you are now fighting to live in Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, will you choose to leave or stay put?” One of the most popular websites in China, Sohu.com, asked its netizens that question on Friday, December 11th, in a survey entitled “Getting Out of Bei-Shang-Guang.” By Friday night, over 30,000 people had participated in the poll, with a majority naming “the inability to afford a home” and “unfair treatment under the Huji or household registration system” as the top two issues driving them away from first tier cities.

There is another option – to move from Bei-Shang-Guang to a second tier city where cost of living and marriage is cheaper and competition for jobs may not be as fierce. Increasingly, young migrants to China’s biggest cities, unable to make a comfortable life for themselves, face the question of whether to attempt to make a life in a second tier city or to return to their hometowns to settle there.

Salaries climb but home prices soar
One aspiring youth, Ms. Wang, recalls her fight to stay in Beijing after graduating from a university there. “There is no hope of ever moving my household registration to Beijing, and there's no way I can ever afford a home there. Every time my salary climbs a little, home prices soars that much more. I've changed jobs over ten times within a period of four years and had had to move three times in six months.”

Zhang Lin and Xiao Zi are a young couple living and working in Shanghai. They've saved up over 200,000 RMB in four years, hoping to buy a home to begin settling down and get married. “But a 90 square meters (over 1,000 square feet) flat costs 1.8 million RMB. Twenty percent of the asking price is needed for down payment and we'd have to afford a mortgage of over 4,000 yuan a month. Even though my girlfriend and I can try and save up to pay the monthly mortgage, the 300,000 RMB down payment plus all the added fees and taxes is really not the kind of money we can put down at the moment.”

In the face of this cruel reality, Zhang Lin, who had wanted to fight it out in this metal jungle of a metropolis, could not help but give up on his dreams. Taking his new wife with him, they boarded the train home to Guangxi.

White collar couples hiding out on campus
“The dream of ever owning a home is really the furthest away from what's reality for us right now. We're married but we're now 'in hiding' (hiding away from the soaring home prices outside) on the campus.” Ms. Wen is a graduate student finishing up her doctorate degree at a university in Beijing. “My husband earns 6,000 RMB a month, and I earn less than 2,000 RMB a month. It's unrealistic to think that we'd own a home any time soon.”

Thus, Ms. Wen chooses to “hide out” on campus with her husband, living in segregated college dorms and opting to rendezvous in hotels whenever they can. “There are lots of married grad students like us hiding out on campuses. We can't afford to have children and are afraid to let our parents visit us.”

A surplus of homes
Mr. Ma, a senior undergrad at the Communications University of China and a Shanghai native, is the lucky owner of a villa worth 3.24 million RMB in Xianghe County in Hebei Province. Ma started out in the real estate trading business when he was still a middle school student. He convinced his parents to buy a home, only to flip it out the next year which earned him twice the return on his investments. Through his real estate trades he’s become the owner of four villas.

Shanghai eight times more expensive than Tokyo
Mr. Wang is a native of Beijing currently living and working in Tokyo. In March of this year, Wang brought a flat (1,399 square feet for 3.5 million RMB) in the Edogawa District of Tokyo. Recently, he returned to Shanghai to look at some property for prospective investment, but found that a flat of around the same size and in a similar district is going for 4 million RMB – when calculating the living expenses with the cost of owning a home, Shanghai is eight times more expensive than Tokyo.

At the moment, it seems China’s real estate prices will continue to rise, while competition for jobs grows ever fierce. As more students attend and graduate from China’s universities and China’s overseas students choose to return home to find work, young Chinese graduates may face even bleaker job prospects. However, changes to the household registration may be in the works which may provide respite and revive the dreams of China’s college graduates and young professionals.

Source: gcpnews.com

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