Bruce Humes

The South China Morning Post reports that “Snail House” (蜗居), a popular soap opera chronicling the misery of China’s newly christened “mortgage slaves” (房奴), has suddenly been “pulled from the airwaves.”  Intriguingly, China’s best-known international news digest, Cankao Xiaoxi (参考消息) repackaged the news for China readers just 48 hours later (December 4, 2009).  Censorship is generally not openly acknowledged by high-profile media here, especially where references to real-to-life “property magnates who hire thugs to throw people off the land they want to develop” are included in the report!

As always, the Chinese news item in Cankao Xiaoxi has been edited as you can see below—all words I have crossed out have been likewise stricken from the Chinese text. Typically, for instance, the unsavory fact that the Chinese government has “encouraged a US$1.3 trillion credit boom” has been deleted. But this time around, the Chinese text includes a handful of phrases that have been slightly rewritten or even added, not simply translated. I have rendered these phrases [in brackets].  One striking change in the text: The English refers to “priviliged and corrupt individuals,” while the Chinese alters “individuals” to “officials.”  

Are these reworked phrases just the result of a fatigued Cankao Xiaoxi translation editor working in the early hours of the morning, or a signal to corrupt officials in league with property developers that the good times are indeed over?

For the benefit of English-language readers of Chinese Books, English Reviews, below is the original South China Morning Post article showing how the Chinese digest has been re-packaged (crossed out=deleted from the Chinese, [brackets]=not present in the original English): 

Mortgage Slaves’ Plight More Fact than Fiction

By David Elmer

South China Morning Post

Until it was mysteriously pulled from the airwaves [disappeared from some screens] recently, the latest hit TV show on the mainland was Woju. Set in the imaginary city of Jiangzhou, clearly based on Shanghai, it follows white-collar workers as they struggle to buy apartments.

Those who manage to do so end up as fangnu, or mortgage slaves, as they work non-stop to repay their loans. The sub-plot concerns the antics of Jiangzhou’s corrupt cadres and property developers, who are in league to profit from the booming housing market.

“Woju” translates as “snail house”, a sly reference to [reflects] the way modern home ownership has become such a burden on people. The fact that the show was so realistic made it popular enough for Sohu.com to buy the rights to screen it online. Its portrayal of newlyweds taking on huge mortgages or turning to their families for help to buy an apartment, and of avaricious officials and property magnates who hire thugs to throw people off land they want to develop, hit a nerve among urban residents.

More than anything, Woju raised the pertinent questions of who is really in charge of housing policy and who benefits from the current lax controls over the market. That something is wrong is clear: in Beijing, the gap between property prices and average incomes is rising at a faster rate than anywhere else. The latest report on the housing market from the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences says that most property owners in Beijing pay far more than the recommended 25 per cent of their income to service their mortgages. Many have to rely on their families to make the initial down payment and many are flocking to neighbouring, and cheaper, Hebei province to buy apartments.

Yet the same report reveals that half of Beijing’s property purchases are made by people from outside the capital, and that 20 per cent of those are purely for investment. So, while ordinary Beijingers are being priced out of the market, speculators are snapping up apartments in droves, while developers build new ones. It is a pattern being repeated in other major cities.

Last month, Fan Gang, an adviser to the People’s Bank of China, highlighted [said] the excessive speculation that is sending property prices ever higher. But  Fan didn’t mention that  [actually] the [excessive speculation] rush to invest in the housing market has been caused by record [large-scale] lending by the banks. Since the global financial crisis, the government has lowered interest rates and encouraged a US$1.3 trillion credit boom.

Now, with both the Shanghai Composite Index [stock market] and house prices roaring ahead, even the People’s Bank of China is warning of asset bubbles appearing. 

As far back as January, a group of senior Communist Party members [high-level officials] published a [an open] letter on the internet saying that rampant [large-scale] lending could lead to a situation where “privileged and corrupt individuals [officials] may use this opportunity to enrich themselves”.

As the axed Woju made very clear, the property speculators have done just that. In doing so, they might also have [This may have] created the conditions for the next financial crisis [to erupt].