Hong kong protests - Huge

[Jimbeaux]

Mermaid said:

Jimbeaux said:

Internal unrest, strife, festering internal divisions, call it what you will but it will act as an infection, worsening as time goes by..

Chinese property groups look abroad as local market turns frothy

NEW YORK, NY - OCTOBER 06: The Waldorf Astoria, the landmark New York hotel, is viewed on October 6, 2014 in New York City. It was announced October 6, that Hilton Worldwide will sell the Waldorf to the Beijing-based Anbang Insurance Group for $1.95 billion. As part of the deal the Waldorf will undergo a major renovation. The Park Avenue hotel opened on October 1, 1931, and claimed to be the biggest hotel in the world at the time, attracting movie stars, politicians and the wealthy.

A wave of Japanese investment in iconic Manhattan buildings such as the Rockefeller Center in the late-1980s eventually came to symbolise the peak of Japan’s bubble.
With Hilton’s $1.95bn sale of the landmark Waldorf Astoria New York Hotel to an obscure Chinese insurance company it is tempting to ask whether history is repeating itself.


Outbound property investment from mainland China has soared from less than $70m in 2008 to $16bn in 2013, according to research from real estate services company Colliers International.
Chinese investors are now the biggest foreign buyers of property in New York City, London and Australia.
A key incentive for Chinese buyers is high and frothy prices at home and a worsening slump in domestic markets across the country – also an important motivator for Japanese investors during their shortlived offshore buying spree.
Some analysts believe Chinese global property purchases are likely to be around a lot longer and that the trend has only begun.
One major difference is size, not just of the domestic Chinese market but also of its main participants, who are all looking beyond the country’s borders as they seek to renovate their business models for a future beyond shovelling concrete.
Of the top 10 listed global developers by revenue, seven of them are now mainland Chinese, according to S&P Capital IQ. China Vanke, the country’s largest residential builder, had sales last year of $20.4bn, almost three times higher than Lennar, the biggest player in the US.
For now, the sector remains almost entirely reliant on selling physical property. At Wanda, China’s top commercial developer, unit sales still account for almost 90 per cent of revenue.
While that model worked well during the boom, it is coming under increasing stress as the market turns. Nationwide property sales in China this year have dropped more than 10 per cent compared with 2013, while prices in 68 of the 70 most-watched cities fell in August, the highest number on record.
Powerful connections

In 1992, Deng Xiaoping, leader of the Communist Party of China and later a reformer, called for the Pudong district of China's largest city to lead economic development under China's socialist system with a new economic zone and incentives for foreign investors.

Anbang Insurance, the Chinese financial company that this week bought the Waldorf Astoria, has one huge thing going for it in its home market – its founder and chairman is the grandson-in-law of Deng Xiaoping, the architect of modern China. The chairman, Wu Xiaohui, who is in his late 40s, is renowned in Beijing for his ruthless business style and the support he receives from powerful political leaders

“After 15 years of vigorous growth, the Chinese property market is approaching a point of maturity. The Chinese economy is looking to consolidate – that pushes the developers to look for new opportunities,” says Albert Lau, head of China research at Savills.

Chinese developers now have projects under way in cities stretching across four continents, from Sydney to San Francisco via south London. Shanghai-based Greenland has announced the biggest deal so far, investing $5bn in the Atlantic Yards redevelopment in Brooklyn.
Chinese insurance companies such as Anbang, buyer of the Waldorf Astoria Hotel, were only given permission to buy offshore property in late 2012.
So far there have been few high-profile deals, including Ping An Insurance’s purchase of London’s Lloyd’s Building, and China Life’s acquisition of a Canary Wharf office tower.

But many more deals are expected to come as the Chinese insurance companies look to diversify away from the shaky domestic market.
They will join individual buyers who are already piling in to major western markets in a huge way.
In London, Chinese were the top foreign buyers last year, according to property consultancy Knight Frank, accounting for 6 per cent of all purchases of more than £1m. Russian buyers accounted for 5.2 per cent.
Mainland Chinese were also the top foreign investors in Australian property last year, accounting for 11.4 per cent of total foreign investment in real estate with $5.9bn in purchases, according to Australia’s Foreign Investment Review Board.
The decision by major Chinese developers to venture abroad is the clearest sign of the waning enthusiasm for China’s home market.
Yet in going overseas, developers are still hoping to target the same set of buyers as they look to capitalise on the rising trend of Chinese people moving overseas for work or study.
In spite of their inexperience abroad, Chinese developers have some advantages. As the largest builders in the world, they bring economies of scale when it comes to materials and equipment, while their access to Chinese funding – both through commercial and policy banks – often provides attractive financing.
Aside from finding new markets, mainland companies want to learn from the most experienced western players. Vanke is working on a project in San Francisco in partnership with Tishman Speyer, one of the best-known US property companies. Such tie-ups offer Chinese developers a chance to learn new skills, such as property management.
The ultimate goal is to move away from a near total reliance on property sales towards a sustainable income-based and asset-light model. Such a switch requires willing investors, which might be found among China’s fast-growing insurance and pension funds.
However, while the aims are clear, the paths to achieving them remain fraught with risk, say analysts. Any such overhaul requires time, money and the willingness to take risks – all things that developers may find in short supply if China’s housing market downturn worsens.
Alvin Wong, analyst at Barclays, cautions that the business of providing services and managing properties is simply too low margin to replace the cash flow that comes from the traditional build and sell model.
“In the next two to three years, developers will still need to focus on sales, lowering debt levels and clearing inventory,” he says. “It’s very difficult to make a big change.”
If the domestic property downturn accelerates and turns into a Japan-style crash then the current wave of Chinese buying may dry up just as the “Japanese invasion” did more than two decades ago.

Good points MM, thanks for posting. I have been reading how Chinese millionairs have been moving their money out of China quite a bit recently. It doeas not appear to be simple investments as much as getting out ahead of bad times.

[BlackLabel]

More protests as China tightens it's grip on Hong Kong.


Pro-democracy campaigners have accused police of abusing their power and assaulting a number of their activists at a protest to mark the 20th anniversary of Hong Kong's return to Chinese sovereignty. They had been trying to march towards the city's convention centre, where President Xi Jinping was swearing in the territory's new leader, Carrie Lam.

Meanwhile the pro-democracy leaders look to Britain for help but it's not going to get them anywhere.

China says legally binding Hong Kong handover treaty with Britain has 'no practical significance'

Telegraph said:

‘The Sino-British Joint Declaration, as a historical document, no longer has any practical significance,” foreign ministry spokesman Lu Kang said.

“It is not at all binding for the central government's management over Hong Kong. The UK has no sovereignty, no power to rule and no power to supervise Hong Kong after the handover."

Edited by BlackLabel on Saturday 1st July 13:58

[robm3]

BlackLabel said:

More protests as China tightens it's grip on Hong Kong.


Pro-democracy campaigners have accused police of abusing their power and assaulting a number of their activists at a protest to mark the 20th anniversary of Hong Kong's return to Chinese sovereignty. They had been trying to march towards the city's convention centre, where President Xi Jinping was swearing in the territory's new leader, Carrie Lam.

Meanwhile the pro-democracy leaders look to Britain for help but it's not going to get them anywhere.

China says legally binding Hong Kong handover treaty with Britain has 'no practical significance'

Telegraph said:

‘The Sino-British Joint Declaration, as a historical document, no longer has any practical significance,” foreign ministry spokesman Lu Kang said.

“It is not at all binding for the central government's management over Hong Kong. The UK has no sovereignty, no power to rule and no power to supervise Hong Kong after the handover."

Edited by BlackLabel on Saturday 1st July 13:58

We are completely irrelevant in HK now. We didn't even send a politician for the recent 20 year festival. The only reference I saw was Boris doing a bit on Facebook politely asking China to honour the agreement - haha

[BlackLabel]

Hundreds of thousands take to the streets in Hong Kong.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/jun/09/vast...

[souper]

Love Hong Kong, would like to go back but the place is changing. Estimating 1 million protesting more here https://www.hongkongfp.com/2019/06/09/just-no-chin...

[Leithen]

Won’t make a blind bit of difference sadly.

[FourWheelDrift]

How long before the tanks arrive?

[BlackLabel]

"China has warned the UK not to "interfere in its domestic affairs" amid a growing diplomatic row over the recent protests in Hong Kong."

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-48855643

[otolith]

ash73 said:

Why did Maggie give HK away in the first place?

She didn't, the government of Robert Gascoyne-Cecil did, when it agreed to a 99 year lease in the 1898 second Convention of Peking.

[otolith]

You think you've got enough, but in no time you want another one!

When it was negotiated, the Chinese were weak and the British Empire was mighty. Not so much when it ran out.

[Dr Jekyll]

otolith said:

You think you've got enough, but in no time you want another one!

When it was negotiated, the Chinese were weak and the British Empire was mighty. Not so much when it ran out.

Also Hong Kong was a poor colonial outpost when it was negotiated, one of the richest cities in the world when it ran out.

[Randy Winkman]

We'd be giving it away now as part of Brexit anyway.

[vonuber]

ash73 said:

Very tricky situation. We need to tread carefully, there's nothing we can actually do, and it's only a matter of time until the one country two systems model is abandoned.

I feel sorry for HKers because inevitably their freedom will be forfeited, and I fear their actions may accelerate the process because China won't tolerate it.

That's the crux of the issue isn't it.

[BlackLabel]

“Jeremy Hunt warns of ‘serious consequences’ if China fails to honour Hong Kong agreement“

https://www.channel4.com/news/exclusive-jeremy-hun...

What exactly could we do?

[Captain Smerc]

Sweat fk all I would think .

[anonymous-user]

The Chinese don't give a damn about what the "west" think. Their economy is now sophisticated enough and they have enough wealth to completely ignore what the UK and USA think.

This is playing out in the South China Sea and Hong Kong, soon it will be Taiwan. That's when it gets messy.

Sadly, the moment HK was handed over, their freedoms under the UK law system were only going one way.

[anonymous-user]

The U.K. didn’t have to give all of HK back, just up to Boundary street, where my school was. Although that might have been impractical.

The U.K. did let down Hong Kongers by not giving them right of abode (in the U.K.) though after ‘97. That was pretty shameful at the time as people wanted the option just incase it went wrong after the hand over.

Luckily I had both Hong Kong and U.K. residency but many others weren’t as lucky.

[bongtom]

Lucky?
That’s not the word I’d use.

[Not-The-Messiah]

El stovey said:

The U.K. didn’t have to give all of HK back, just up to Boundary street, where my school was. Although that might have been impractical.

The U.K. did let down Hong Kongers by not giving them right of abode (in the U.K.) though after ‘97. That was pretty shameful at the time as people wanted the option just incase it went wrong after the hand over.

Luckily I had both Hong Kong and U.K. residency but many others weren’t as lucky.

We should have done what the chines are doing now and just say the deal is now just a historical document and means nothing and never handed it back.

[Not-The-Messiah]

jsf said:

The Chinese don't give a damn about what the "west" think. Their economy is now sophisticated enough and they have enough wealth to completely ignore what the UK and USA think.

This is playing out in the South China Sea and Hong Kong, soon it will be Taiwan. That's when it gets messy.

Sadly, the moment HK was handed over, their freedoms under the UK law system were only going one way.

the UK yes the US I don't think so.