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China Syndrome, The
Sometimes you can get a sense of a nation's mood of the moment by watching its most popular music videos and television serials. On that count, going by the phenomenal success of Chinese pop artist Huang Zheng's latest hit, the current mood, among a cross-section of China's hard-working ordinary folks, is one of despair and borderline hopelessness.锟? Zheng's music video, titled Mai (Sell) - which you can watch at - is an anguished reflection on soaring property prices in Chinese cities, which are something of a national obsession today. Barely a day passes by without some alarmist media commentary about a 'property锟?bubble' that's driving prices to unaffordable, stratospheric levels. But whereas sober commentary by analysts, however educative, may fail to make an emotional connection with most people, Zheng's video makes that emotional crossing quite effectively, even if somewhat melodramatically. In any case, since no social phenomenon gets 'mainstreamed' in the mindspace of the general public unless it seeps through into the universe of popular culture, it's perhaps the most compelling and identifiable commentary on what's happening in China today.锟? In the video, a promotional flyer for an upmarket property development becomes the strand that connects the frustrations of a cab-driver, a white-collar office-worker and a cleaning lady - all of whom realise it will take them several lifetimes to own an Women'spumps apartment of the sort that's advertised. Their experience is contrasted with that of a Mercedes-riding, mistress-fondling moneyed man who snaps up six apartments, each of which costs him the equivalent of only five days' worktime.锟? There's a further Toryburch flats twist in the narrative about social disparity in the end, but apart from the minor matters of detail, the video is one of the most searing borderline-political commentaries on the property madness and income equality that characterises China today. And from the inflamed responses that it has given rise to on the Internet, it's clear that the song and its underlying message have found resonance among a wide cross-section of society.锟? Zheng's musical endeavour isn't even the first such instance of Chinese 'popular culture' giving artful expression to popular angst of people who feel alienated from the property ownership game or who feel锟?'enslaved' for life by their mortgage burden.锟?Last year, a Chinese-language television serial, titled Woju (Snail House), became a controversial hit for its depiction of the struggles of two sisters, against the background of a middle-class obsession with buying property. The elder, married sister is a hard-working office worker who dreams of owning an apartment, but cannot afford to. Her younger sibling senses her anguish, gives up her true love and becomes the mistress of a corrupt government official - just to make money to make her sister's home-ownership dream come true. Wherever one travels in China, it's hard to miss the sight of tower after tower of empty residential buildings, which developers say have been fully sold out but which bear no signs of human habitation. Economists reckon that this is because Chinese investors see property investments as a 'store of value' and an unfailing bet on value appreciation - and therefore stockpile many apartments, with no desire to earn a rental income on them. The fact that real interest rates in China are currently lower than the inflation rate, and that there aren't many legitimate investment avenues for Chinese people, is additionally feeding the frenzied property buying despite the government's apparent efforts at cooling it.锟?A 'property tax' might perhaps disincentivise the rampant stockpiling of emptReplicaWatchesReplicaWatches
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