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please explain this to me...china
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Anonymous
| I read an article the other day about those with money in China coming to the US for real estate tours. This would allow them to buy when we are down on our knees. WTF? Is this real, do we really allow CHINA, a communist country, to send people over here to buy us up when we are down? Are we allowed to buy property in China? I just want to know more on this and how/why this happens. Thanks for any info. |
Anonymous
| I also am upset about this. We've reduced what we buy that's made in China. And we let the stores know. |
jsteele
Site Admin Online
Site Admin Online
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I can't answer all of your questions. However, yes, we do allow citizens of China to purchase real estate in the US. It is not entirely accurate to refer to China as "communist" given the country has implemented many capitalist practices. Obviously, the folks who can afford to fly to the US and purchase real estate did not acquire the cash by "giving what they can and taking what they need".
I don't know whether US citizens have a similar ability to purchase Chinese real estate, but I suspect not. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if Chinese citizens didn't find in easier to purchase in the US than China. As to why this happens, it's a pretty easy explanation. We buy nearly everything from China, giving them a huge surplus of US dollars. They use those dollars to buy -- among other things -- US Treasury Bonds and US real estate. Chinese investment groups have huge stakes in many US Banks and investment firms and actually expanded such investments when the finance crisis created a huge demand for capital in the sector. A weak dollar means that investment of dollars outside the US is not attractive, so that only encourages further investment by the Chinese of their dollars in the US. The same is true of "petrol" dollars which have also been pouring into US banks. The US has been having a fire sale and a few lucky ones are taking advantage of it with money they earned from us in the first place. |
Anonymous
In China, citizens have the right to own a house but not the land underneath it. They lease the land from the governent in 70 year increments. http://www.upiasia.com/Economics/2009/03/25/chinas_home_owners_to_face_new_charges/6299/ US citizens have zero rights to any Chinese real estate. I don't blame the Chinese one bit for wanting to buy in the US! |
Anonymous
| Why does it disturb you to think of the Chinese owning property here? They pay taxes on the property.... and they can't take it back to China with them. |
Anonymous
Serious food for thought.... |
Anonymous
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Foreigners, including US citizens, can buy houses in China. In fact, many US citizens born in China have bought houses in China in the last few years. |
Anonymous
The other side of the coin is that real estate owners don't pay property tax in China. |
Anonymous
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Unless you think Americans should be denied the right to buy up property all over the world and drive up real estate prices to the point where locals can't afford to live in their own towns anymore (just take in a few episodes of "House Hunters International" and watch what is going on in Costa Rica, Panama, Portugal, etc.) then I really wouldn't complain.
We won the Cold War, remember? Who really worries about "those Communists" anymore-- that is so 1979. |
Anonymous
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In the 80's, we had the same paranoia but the bogeyman was the Japanese. More recently, the bogeyman was sovereign wealth funds of oil rich nations. Now, it's the Chinese. They aren't going to end up owning our country, if that's what you are afraid of. They might buy some property, and if they did it enough it would help real estate prices, but it is really unlikely that they can make a difference.
BTW Americans invest huge dollars in Chinese companies. Do you think they are afraid of us owning them? |
Anonymous
| It seems foreign/international investment groups have already been buying real estate in the US: the British, Dutch, Saudis, French, ... why is there such a fear/paranoia of another country called China buying assets in the US? How much do the Chinese own relative to what the British and the Dutch have already owned? In the 80s, the British and the Dutch owned about 85% of foreign-owned real estate in the US and the Japanese owned 5%, but the Japanese got all the media hype and xenophobic attention. |
Anonymous
Anyone care about the slave labor trade in China? It's what keeps me up at night. Those people are still sleeping head-to-head with their chickens. Saw the pictures in the Post. |
Anonymous
Yes. I was the PP writing about the 80's and I could not recall the british ownership percentage. Thanks. |
Anonymous
I agree. I was speaking only about Chinese buying property in the U.S. as some communist plot to buy our country while we are vulnerable. There are plenty of reasons to not like the Chinese government or labor practices or manufacturing standards there. |
Anonymous
| The Chinese that you saw buying real-estate in your neighborhood are probably working in US, many of them actually US citizens. The fact that they look Chinese does not imply they are Chinese communists invading US. |