JUL 7TH, 2011 BY MICHAEL PETTIS
POSTED IN BALANCE SHEETS
I want to start this newsletter with a story that may be fairly illustrative of one of the problems within the Chinese economy that I worry about. There was anarticle in last Sunday’s edition of the South China Morning Post about a real estate project in Guangdong. (WC Fields’ was supposed to have once called Mae West “a plumber’s idea of Cleopatra”, and for some reason that story popped into my mind when I read the article.)
It says that a real estate developer is attempting to build a replica of a beautiful Austrian village in Guangdong province not too far from Shenzhen:
It is a scenic jewel, a hamlet of hill-hugging chalets, elegant church spires and ancient inns all reflected in the deep still waters of an alpine lake. Hallstatt’s beauty has earned it a listing as a Unesco World Heritage site but some villagers are less happy about a more recent distinction: plans to copy their hamlet in China.
After taking photos and collecting other data on the village while mingling with the tourists, a Chinese firm has started to rebuild much of Hallstatt in Guangdong province, just 60 kilometres away from the Hong Kong border, hoping to attract wealthy mainlanders, “homesick” expatriates in Hong Kong and tourists. The project had drawn a mixed response from residents in the original village.
The article goes on to discuss the anger many of the residents of Hallstatt feel about having their town copied and replicated without permission.
That this sort of building project seems a tad over the top is not why I bring up the article. Those of us who live here are quite used to the many sometimes-bizarre projects aimed at attracting new wealth and signaling status. Of course if it makes the residents of Hallstatt feel any better, I am absolutely certain that the Guangdong replica will not be a perfect copy of Hallstatt. I have no doubt that there will be hundreds of architectural and cultural “improvements” that will ensure that no one confuses the shiny replica with its dowdy original. Excessive restraint typically isn’t one of the sins afflicting real estate developers that cater to the local rich.
What interested me about the article was something else altogether. According to the article, the project is being developed by “Minmetals Land, the real estate development arm of China Minmetals, China’s largest metals trader.”
No comments:
Post a Comment