Chan: China real estate still sizzling

Hong Kong tycoon Ronnie Chan, who has invested in real estate on the Chinese mainland since 1992, said he has never before seen the market "as healthy as it is today".

Prices are climbing in cities like Beijing and Shanghai, where Chan expects the market to one day be like New York City's. The real estate markets in many Tier 2 cities are very healthy.

"The unit prices are quite high. People are well educated and wealthy. The supply and demand of those markets are balanced," Chan, chairman of Hang Lung Properties Ltd, said on June 5 at a breakfast meeting at the Cheung Kong Graduate School of Business in New York.

Hang Lung has invested $11 billion and built commercial complexes in Tianjin, Shenyang, Jinan, Wuxi, Dalian, Kunming and Wuhan.

Chan spoke of a car dealership, which is a tenant at his shopping center in Wuxi, Jiangsu province, sold more than 200 Ferraris and Maseratis in the past year.

"People have money, and that's not corruption," said Chan, hinting that no Chinese government official would drive such a luxury car after President Xi Jinping's crackdown on corruption.

Chan praised Xi for the anti-corruption campaign, which he described with the metaphor of surgery on a patient with cancer.

Just how a surgeon works, Chan sees Xi's strategy as "dealing with the big one while holding everything else constant".

Chan, who's also the executive committee chairman of The Better Hong Kong Foundation, said "the Hong Kong economy will track along, muddle through, but (is) still a lot better than much of the rest of the world".

Chan said that statistics show that Hong Kong has created 11 percent more jobs since 2010; average household income grew 40 percent; salary increases of the bottom 30 percent outstrip those of the top 30 percent by four times; and the number of people who rely on social security went down by 20 percent.

"Hong Kong's future will be fine. Please don't invest in it so that I can get all the benefits," Chan said to audience laughter.

hezijiang@chinadailyusa.com