How many officials can afford their houses?
- Source: Global Times
- [23:45 June 30 2009]
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Illustration: Liu Rui
By Ma Guangyuan
Days ago, Guangdong provincial official Li Huiwu said about 70 to 80 percent of Guangzhou’s citizens couldn’t afford an apartment due to high housing prices. He took himself as an example: “The price of many houses is over 20,000 yuan ($2,928) per square meter. My monthly pay is 8,000 yuan ($1,171), which means even if I put two months’ salaries together, I could not afford even one square meter.”
If we compare current housing prices with the salaries of officials, we can easily see that it is quite common for civil servants to be unable to afford housing. If they want to buy a house, they would have to save all their paychecks for 15 years in succession, without spending even one cent.
Being unable to afford a house doesn’t mean you don’t have one. This is almost a public paradox in Beijing, a city filled with various government ministries. Although most officials can’t afford a house at all with their salaries, the truth is the majority of them have their own houses.
Where are the houses from? It is known to all that from 1998, when the State Council abolished the welfare housing distribution system, the housing of civil servants has been brought into the housing monetization system. Everyone has been driven into the market, with the exception of the very poor.
However, welfare housing distribution, as the privilege of civil servants or the staff of some institutions, didn’t really fade out.
After 2003 in particular, housing prices increased rapidly, which revived welfare housing distribution. It appeared in different forms, and went farther than before in many institutions.