The Chives State and its People

 

Over the past few months, the term “chives” was elevated to a new level. Today, the Chinese people are not only acknowledging themselves as chives, but also mocking the nation as a “Chives State 韭州” . It looks like we’ve finally come to accept the fact: in a country where legislation lacks transparency and power over-concentrated, every Chinese citizen is a root of Chives in the end of the day.

 

In the early few months of 2018, “being harvested as chives” was still just an idiom used within the finance circle. We heard our friends talking about it, saw it in news headlines and social media discussions, and, to be completely honest, disregarded the chives who claimed to have been “harvested”: acts of short-term speculations come with high risk, they should have known! There are reasons that they are the ones got harvested, of course there are!

 

We thought we were the superior ones. As long as we keep making wise, conservative investment choices (or just make no investment at all - so much easier!), we will never end up in that chives field and risk being harvested one day. We are safe! we are clean!

 

How naïve we were.

 

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Chives Field No.3: the Housing Market

 

House is the most important thing in Chinese peoples’ lives. Culturally, house ownership has long been perceived as a prerequisite for marriage; most Chinese parents, especially those from the males’ side, would exhaust their entire life-saving for a new house for their sons (thus to secure the bride’s hands). Economically, despite long-running speculations about the domestic property bubble, real estate was still considered the best, and perhaps only investment tool for beating inflation. Hence everyone with money would buy a house; and those without money would do everything they can to borrow every possible RMB, and to buy a house.

 

At least this was how it was like for the entire past decade. From 2005 to 2016, China’s house price surged by over 66%, growing nearly twice as fast as national income. For many, the plunging property price in China was the sign of the country’s economic miracle; when everything was looking so new and so shiny, no one had time to think about its inner contradictions. Everyone just wanted to be part of the game.

 

 

While the publics imperatively wooed into the real estate market, the officials started t become concerned about the housing market bubble, which would be more than disastrous for the economy when it bursts. Therefore, since March 2016, the government have issued a wide range of orders to curb the overheated real-state sector from mortgage restrictions, increased down-payment requirements, bans on purchases by non-residents (those without hukou) to directly limiting the number of homes that people can buy. “Houses are for living in, not for speculations (房子是用来住的，不是炒的）” this order from President Xi Jingping was emphasized again and again, and was quoted directly in the 19^th People’s Congress report in 2017.

 

People started to feel uncomfortable. Sure, the official verdicts all sounded reasonable, but for those who have tied their entire family wealth into the housing market, the idea of top-down price curbs was a slap on the face. 

 

While worrying about the collapses of house price, the Chinese house owners are now faced with another round of harvesting: property tax.

 

Noise around property tax had been buzzing on the background for quite a few years. After years of delay and opposition from vested interests, it looks like it is finally happening. Although government announcement is not yet out, since this March, various official news channels have all hinted, directly and indirectly, on the arrival of property tax in the near future.

 

As much as the government continues to emphasize that tax levitation is for curbing speculations, the common people - the ones who have spent it all for their houses, no longer buy the rhetoric anymore. In a country where land is still publicly owned, property buyers only get use-rights for their residential land for 70 years. If no ownership, why tax?

 

Shadowed by the trade war and domestic economic slowdown, this year, the Chinese people began to see, slowly but clearly, the insolvent reality:

 

China’s real estate market is not a fairyland filled with gold digs. On the contrary, it is a field filled with fertile chives. When the government is short of money, it is time for the people, the chives, to pay the price.

 

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Chives Field No. 4: The (No Longer) Populous China

 

On August 6^th, People’s Daily posted a commentary titled “Having kids is not only a family thing, but a national thing too”. In 1,000 words, it warned on the hazardous impact of the declining birth rate, and urged policy-makers, from national to local, to come up with more comprehensive welfare plans for young, fertile couples. “In the face of great economic pressure, people have no choice but to passively resist having kids,” wrote People’s Daily, “the government must take more targeted measures to solve the problem and provide a better life for its people.”

 

 

The piece might be intended to deliver message to bureaucrats and policy-makers, yet the public went furious simply by the title itself: for many people - the two of us included - it read as a calling for citizens to reproduce for the country. As a generation grew up influenced by individualistic values and used to single-child family structure, such idea was not only unacceptable, but also ridiculous to its core: we are a generation that can’t even afford our own livings, now you want us to have kids?!

 

Then things went worse.

 

Last week, Xinhua Daily, a provincial newspaper, posted a commentary in proposal of a “single tax” and a “maternity fund”. Written by two Chinese professors, it suggested those citizens with less than two children to contribute a share of their income into a public fund, which could only be withdrew when the individual has a second child or retired.

 

"What the heck is maternity fund? Are us chives destined to be harvested?"

 

Like oil spilled on fire, the article triggered public outrage at an unprecedented scale. Although the proposal was later criticized by CCTV, many believed it was intended for the government to testing out the water. Yes, there’s still a long way for a suggested proposal turning into state legislations, but the fact that such commentary showed up on party-owned media proved that policy-makers were at least thinking along this line, which, for angry netizens like us, were totally offensive.

 

Some of the comments from angry netizens questioning the government's changing birth policy.

 

In 2017, a year since two-child policy was issued, birth rate in China still dropped by 3.5 percent with only over 17 million newborns. Meanwhile, China’s elderly population is expected to reach 400 million by the end of 2035. We totally get the obvious problems here: the labor poor is draining out soon, and an aging population is putting significant strain on the national health and social care system. What we don’t get, and cannot stop feeling depressed about however, is the dire fact that the government is asking its people to pay for its own policy mistakes. The one-child policy messed up the national demography, caused endless cases of personal sufferings (remember all those forced abortions?) and institutional corruptions, now, when the policy’s negative impacts are surfacing out, the big guys suddenly changed idea and are now calling for second, or even more children from the people. 

 

Who are we really, other than chives that are destinated to reproduce the next generation of, well, younger chives?

 

Left: slogan during the one-child policy period, "in order to get rich, we must plant more trees and have less kids".

Right: slogan after the government opened second-child in 2016, "it is the party secretary's responsibility to make sure every family in our village has a second child. "