China has a new casino: the Philippines
latimes.com
latimes.com
Yes, but it's not all because of Chinese offshore gambling. In particular, there are 1.2 million people working in BPO, almost all in Manila, and the industry continues to grow at 20%/year.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Business_process_outsourcing_i...
The large islands are also very well developed even compared to places like India for example not to mention their local region.
https://www.livemint.com/Industry/ZFo31eoIE2QjFBlGDX6Q8M/Ban...
Since it's dollarized, it's very convenient for laundry.
The same pattern in Africa, development projects staffed by Chinese workers in segregated company run communities.
They built a train line in Africa, had a big opening day ceremony with a local running the train. After that day... the local guy never ran the train again.
Belt and road is costing the Chinese a fortune and it seems they're beginning to realise a lot of it is being wasted. They recently refused to fund a planned extension of the railway in Kenya. There has been a lot of fuss about the port in Sri Lanka that was repossessed by China, and theories that this is a deliberate strategy. That doesn't look like it's actually the case, so far it's the only example of that happening.
China doesn't seem to have any qualms with that kind of development though. I recall a tour through a city and an international airport, huge 20 lane superhighway with... just nobody using it. Ghost towns. Empty supermalls with maybe one or two shops open.
It's all investments, it's putting investor money in real estate, gambling on economy and population growth to necessitate use of the real estate and infrastructure, thus increasing the price / value of the real estate.
The Belt and Road Initiative is going to go down in history as a colossal white elephant, an extension of the domestic Chinese model of
“Let's borrow a ton of money to spend on infrastructure and keep doing it forever to pump up the economy.”
to other countries.
Thing is, even governments need to pay off loans eventually, whether in hard currency or in wrenching economic adjustment when the bubble finally pops. China hasn’t had a real economic downturn since Deng opened China up in the 80s. When it happens it’s going to be bad.
Gaining that real estate might look like a win for China, except of course now they're stuck operating it for very little profit. (Certainly less profit than the interest on the loan was planned to be, since otherwise the Sri Lankan government would've just repaid it.)
Many Chinese infrastructure projects in other countries appear irrational if you consider the Chinese government as a single actor. However, they become rational if you consider that they are a way to turn money from the coffers of the Chinese state into foreign currency in the hands of a Chinese construction company. Some of that money will certainly find its way back into the pockets of the decision makers approving the project.
[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magampura_Mahinda_Rajapaksa_...
It appears to me that in another decade everyone will be shocked that the Great Firewall encompasses large portions of Africa and Asia. Additionally everyone will be surprised that a lot of manufacturing has become too expensive domestically in China and is now outsourced to Africa.
At least, that is my read of the whole situation.
And there is nothing wrong with a powerful country winning influence by helping out poorer nations around the world. The US did it with the Marshall Plan, and it was a good thing for everyone involved.
In 30 years, when your economy finally catches fire and is growing 20% year-over-year, the best possible port/airport/railway locations were long ago sold to China.
The elites of a nation push for it because it gives them a chance to make a lot of money off exploiting both the colony and the government funding infrastructure.
However in the end it becomes a bottomless pit for money in sum for a nation, and in the end you cant hold onto what you tried to control anyways, because the harder you try, the more and more resentment builds up until you are forced out.
And it dosen't sound like the Chinese are too interested in making friends, more in making underhanded deals that hand them control over critical resources.
They found out it was untenable to continue being that cruel in the face of a populace that now wanted very slightly less obvious cruelty. I have never seen a compelling argument being made that it was about money, as domestic slavery and other forms of exploitation of people you basically own is always going to be nice and profitable.
If colonies were capable of providing wealth and economic power at scale, the UK alone would have been vastly more powerful than all 3 aforementioned nations combined. In fact you can make a reasonably persuasive argument that the UK's laser focus on colonialism rather than native industry was directly responsible for Germany's rise to begin with. The UK was far more interested in pouring economic resources into colonial ventures (especially in India), which in the end didn't yield net gains, while Germany went from a patchwork network of independent, mostly underdeveloped state, to a world superpower in less than 50 years through obsessive focus on industrial development. Plenty of British industrialists and inventors found a far more receptive audience in Germany after their attempts to raise funding at home were ignored. The German chemical industry largely owed its origins to this for instance.
There is also plenty of argument to be made that slavery as a purely economic concern is far less efficient and profitable in the long run than free men doing the same jobs.[2]
Again, its something that's very profitable for elites, but it is a handicap for a nation as a whole.
[2] https://www.economist.com/free-exchange/2013/09/27/did-slave...
Germany's industrial power is a separate issue that is directly attributable to one or two major historical events that have absolutely nothing to do with colonialism. Suffice it to say that it doesn't compare, because few other countries have gone through a similar process.
Edit: I discussed this with someone else and then I realised you are also just wrong about Germany having no colonies. For example: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_former_German_colonies
In the end, the costs and benefits of having colonies more or less cancelled out.
Still, if China squanders its wealth by giving away infrastructure to the world, while the US squanders its wealth by bombing the world, I think China is winning.
They are. That's called "International Development". What's unusual is how much China is paying out as a proportion of their national income[0], how much they're willing to turn a blind eye to giving unpleasant people and regimes money, and how willing they are to ignore problems that their development will cause in terms of debt traps. In essence, most rich country International Development programs to date have tried to have at least a semblance of doing the right thing rather than just being completely naked influence and power grabs. As noted elsewhere in this thread, it seems there's great potential for this to blow up in the faces of the Chinese, but we'll see!
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_development_aid_countr...
They have been. A lot of the tarmac and bridges in West Africa have been funded by Europe.
So on the whole it is a benefit to locals, but depending on how things were financed and who is responsible for what, it could end up being a negative.
(No-one from that branch of the family lives in India anymore. Things got rather ugly when independence happened.)
To be precise, the first railways in India were paid for by local British magnates / companies, e.g. to transport materials for other construction projects. From 1849 British companies still paid to build the railways themselves but they were given the land for free and guaranteed a 5% rate of return [0].
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_rail_transport_in_I...
Some countries require by law that the Chinese developers have a minimum number of local workers. This mitigates the problem somewhat and hopefully over time the locals will develop the skills to run their own projects.
In the long run, infrastructure investment benefits local communities and opens up more opportunities for the local workforce. It's almost always better to have the infrastructure built than not, earlier than later, and foreign money is a good source of capital for it.
I've often thought that but caught myself thinking I was just buying into the narrative - refreshing to hear it might be slightly less cynical than my brain would have me believe (though still undoubtedly to some degree). My assumption being the skillset to build a transnational highway and scalable mining infrastrcuture is different than doing those things at localised levels.
That's only true if the economy develops to a high enough level, fast enough, to afford to maintain the infrastructure being built that isn't actually natural to the present scale of the economy. That's a large assumption and the consequence of being wrong is disastrous for a poor country. Any time you try to force-leap a country forward, there are immense risks if the underlying economy doesn't keep up, and it won't be China that pays for it later on.
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/25/world/asia/china-sri-lank...
https://www.phnompenhpost.com/business/chinese-own-more-90-s...
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-48729072
There are some shoddy-looking construction sites in Phnom Penh too, and precarious conditions for construction workers even on the more modern construction projects.
To get from Sihanoukville to where we were staying we had to take a main road that was constantly used by trucks getting to and from construction sites. It was a dirt road that had been torn to pieces, including major major potholes, diversions into oncoming traffic to avoid these, huge traffic jams due to this, and at one point the powerlines had collapsed across the road, and had been left there, running live with cars literally driving over them all day long. Definitely a huge accident waiting to happen.
The local infrastructure is just not able to sustain this level of development. And the unfortunate thing was, the development companies were not giving back enough to actually fix up the roads and other chaos they caused, so the locals end up worse off.
from the article: http://www.lapsuslima.com/the-chinese-monkey-trap/
There is social transformation too. During my initial time there, people used to walk to each other's houses and chat. Now most are out drinking in bars that sprung up along with the casino or playing with their mobile phones. Whole lot of young people are doing drugs with the new cash influx. More drunk driving seems to be happening - last week a young boy died in an accident riding his motorbike while being drunk - all his friends were drunk too. Such changes are probably happening elsewhere too but the velocity of change I have seen there makes it very stark.
https://www.fool.com/investing/2018/11/04/the-difference-bet...
https://www.businessinsider.com/how-people-use-macau-to-laun...
But if you have actually been, it is quite underwhelming in scale compared to Vegas. Though certainly less low-lifes hanging around than Vegas, and much more cleaned up. To be fair, Vegas had decades to build up its now empty hotels.
This was to deter of course money laundering - but this does not touch the issues that the majority of Chinese in the PH are on tourists visas illegally.
There is also massive speculation within business centers, e.g. Makati, Taguig - BGC, Pasay, Malate and it's going to province areas such as Cebu and Clark. Clark GLobal City is going to be rivaling BGC - Bonifacio GLobal city and the PH is really embracing the whole idea of BPO.
BPO in PH can be really good.
Real estate also is waaaay to overpriced, from 2016 to now, filipinos that acted first, like in every bubble are profiting and you can find many stories of people who put down the bare minimum and afe renting it out profitably.
The problem with that is - they used developer financing, which after 2-5 years there is a balloon payment. Typical terms are usually 50,000-75,000 peso "down" payment, 10-25,000 monthly payment for 2 years - which is just paying the "down" payment on the property - e.g. the developer gets income and the property appreciates in value.
Then at the end, or near, they need to grab a bank loan, and most banks in the PH are very VERY risk adverse and do not hand out mortgages easily, nor cheaply 8-15% normally.
So what you see often are opportunities to buy someone out and give them some money for their trouble. --- But this will soon cascade because:
1. There is no financial education in the PH on a standard level.
2. Developers of these condos push hard on sales and say it's "10k/month" pesos, which is ~$200 usd. The monthly income of a BPO "middle class" agent is 25,000 pesos. $500. Granted, in Business centers it's higher by 5-10,000 pesos for mid level workers and then specialized/niched/non-entry level it can be 50,000 pesos+ which just is $1000~ USD/month.
The average GDP per captia for a filipino is somewhere under $5600/yr.
The economy is also largely based on Remittances.
May be unreliable source, but it gives a good floor:
"These remittances from countries literally all over the world to where Filipinos fan out in search of work in services or industry were worth US$26.9 billion in 2016 - which was equal to almost one half (48 per cent) of the $56bn of total merchadise exports during the year."
https://www.thenational.ae/business/remittances-remain-cruci...
tl;dr bubble is going to come, Philippines is going to get owned by China.
And I didn't even talk about Duterte, Drugs or the ever right winged spectrum the Philippines is moving. More fun reading can be found by typing into google "Commission on Human Rights + Duterte + 1000 pesos" 1000 pesos is $20 USD.
What may work in favor of filipinos/locals that acted early is that if they barely afforded the property, and the property appreciated rapidly (e.g. seaside in Pasay / Around Mall of Asia or within Makati or Taguig/BGC) then that equity can be used to finance since the original terms of the property would've been WAY lower.
Example:
If you wanted to purchase a condo in Makati - a common unit is SMDC Jazz. in 2016, they were going for about 3-3.5 million pesos, rent was barely at 20,000 pesos a month. This is 60/70 thousand to purchase, $400/month.
To purchase the same unit today, the price has risen 20-25% depending on view and condition - but I've seen people ask 5 million for originally a 3 million used condo and get it sold w/ a chinese buyer CASH within a week.
Chinese then go around and rent it to their workers, and make a 28sqm condo fit for co-habitation of 3-4 chinese workers and charge them 5-10k/rent (or include it as part of their salary/benefits to make sure they can't quit the job.) which means that unit is now giving the Chinese owner/company 20-40,000 pesos a month just to house their own workers.
Local Filipinos are then able to ride the wave and rent a similar condo to a single occupant for 30-40,000 pesos a month. $600-800.
On Airbnb, you can find a monthly rental at the place for about 50,000 pesos. ~$1000.
You can run a quick check on local rates by common real estate scouting:
1. Airbnb/Aridna 2. Facebook groups. 3. Classifieds such as OLX. 4. Contacting a broker.
tl;dr would I invest in Ph condo? Yes and No. They have generous foreign ownership rights for condos and you can use that to gain permanent residency. But if you're over 35, then that route does not make sense as you can get an SRRV.
For profit and speculation - you really have to understand the market. The reason why in Asia, everyone likes new things is because of deferred maintenance and that condos have a maximum life span of "50" years, but, look at the ones that are 10, 20, 30 years old -- you'll quickly wonder if it's worth the headache.
Condo ownership in the PH can work if you act right, and are at the right stage of a cycle. IMO if you're targeting major parts of Metro Manila - you are too late - but the bubble will burst with more regulation or if the government 180 degrees it's Chinese friends.
There is no mortgage equivalent that happened in the USA 08' Recession/Florida houses because:
1. While there is Pag-Ibig, sort of a FHA equilivent, it does not always underwrite and secure loans for housing.
2. Banks are very risk-adverse and while there are defaults and foreclosure, it's very different.
3. The majority of property purchased are self financed by the companies that built them to generate revenue and hope that the area appreciates and the owner defaults so they can toss it back on the market and sell it for a higher price. You'd think this means the developer has the mind-set of making the property last or use high quality materials, but that's not so.
4. Construction, Politics, Lending, Banking, are all very dirty and fun in the Philippines. I'd love to describe some of the stories and experiences I've seen - but you can read up on them on several facebook groups or go to the PH yourself. It is a culture problem and this makes investing in the PH quite a bumpy journey. One great example I can say is Right of Way is non-existant, and essentially if someone wants your property they can grab it via numerous ways.
The highways are privatized, TPLEX, Subic Express Way are owned by the San Miguel Corp - the beer company in the Philippines. They are rapidly expanding and are now going into value/infrastructure investments. It's pretty awe-inspiring learning how/why.
Also, all the companies/orgliarcoplies are a very real thing. It's known, it's obvious - everyone goes along with it because that's how the PH works.
Still, I love the country. :)
It doesn't seem like quitting would really be a live option for Chinese construction workers on a project in the Philippines. Or rather, they could quit, but they'd then be leaving anyway, so why would the fact that their housing came from you matter?
It's subtracted from salary. In most cases, a requirement.
It's more emphasis on employer and employee relationship, and in a way control. Your housing depends on your employment. Your housing depends on whom you're put with.
Not to mention, 3-4 in 28sqm is Wayyyyyy to nice for construction worker. Oh, no, that's Chinese Office worker in Philippines. Sometimes it can be just 2 in 28sqm, but it depends on which offshore casino they work for.
So, like - properties:
Acqua Residences - Mandalyoung - low end. Antel Spa - Makati - low/mid end. Grammercy - Makati - high end
All within the general spot, and a bit outside the Makati CBD.
Construction workers are 5+ in a place, in worse places (but cheaper for employer) and then are given daily shuttle. Mostly Mandaluyong now for people whom are involved in the new Rockwell - Mandalyoung Bridge project (lol China Aid!)
https://i.imgur.com/6mqL904.jpg
I'm from the USA, perspective is key. While that may be acceptable in China - Philippines largely reflects USA values (in sometimes positive or very negative ways) and employer housing isn't one of them.
> It's pretty awe-inspiring learning how/why.
Mind sharing the how/why? Seems odd a beer company would go into infrastructure.
But, within Luzon, there is infrastructure via Marcos Highway (renamed, but everyone still calls it marcos highway), NLEX, TPLEX, SLEX, Subic ExpressWay that make going from the north point of Luzon to the South Point possible. There is also the Pan Philippine Highway (which really sucks) that supposedly connects north Luzon to South Mindinao and has ferry points.
Regardless, Luzon - Highway/Flights.
Everywhere else - port side cities/flights. Last mile IS really hard.
This also goes hand in hand w/ refrigration - you'll never see yogurt or dairy for sale in the country outside Luzon and major city centers. The dairy products you DO see are highly processed and have high self life. E.g. Yogurt made from milk powder, cheese made from oils, etc. It's really interesting --- but the dairy industry of the Philippines is another interesting shortcoming of the country - if you read reports, something like 90% of all fresh dairy is consumed by Coffee Shops e.g. Starbucks.
1. Forged land title deed.
2. Locals don't like you.
3. Barrangy doesn't like you. Fits above.
4. Combination of 1+2+3.
5. As a foreigner you don't have legal rights, so you must either buy via a corporation or through a spouse EXCEPT if it's a condo that is 50%+ owned by Filipinos OR a specially crafted foreign owned corporation.
6. Anti Dummy Law is big - and can mean instant voiding of corporate veil and instant liability. Philippine courts are self interest and will always put local over foreigner everyday UNLESS in cases of free trade zones or speciality corporations granted by Philippines SEC.
7. Marriage - usually fall out between husband and wife. Whomever is the Filipino has all the assets in their name. While technically you can set it up so that the Business license is only in the filipinos name, and you can have all liquidity/wealth in yours, especially in an untouchable nature -e.g. foreign bank via Citi/HSBC/Bank of China any local land claims can be instantly grabbed by the filipino national.
8. Land leases are actually more secure, and cheaper because you turn an capex into an Opex. Most filipinos will welcome the monthly revenue stream, and then probably argue 5-10yrs down the road when they want more, but depending on the family structure / background these sort of agreements are usually kept because of trust/rapport, but you need to wine/dine and take care of the relationship. It isn't as traditional as "check is in the mail" in western countries.
9. The legal system is very slow, on purpose and depends on WHOM you know. You need to really break into the area, make friends and create bonds - not only will the friends you make help you avoid legal obstacles, they will know someone who can help you. That is key - knowing whom to know. That is how Filipino Culture works. You can not just go in there/browse property online/grab a quick title and go. There is little to no actual title underwriting, the government is at a standstill with its title office and working and can not verify titles and it is a common scam. You can go see lots in person and they have signs saying "DO NOT TRUST PERSON NAMED: ADAM LA CRUZ" with his picture or "LOT NOT FOR SALE" while you can go online and see listings of brokers who say it is and who'd happily take your money.
Outside NCR/Manila - land is cheaper, easier to purchase if you make friends with WHOM lives there. Everyone in the PH loves to meet new people and feel proud that you want to invest in the area - but you actually need to put your feet on the ground, go to the the area where the land is, ask to see the barrangay cabesa (neighborhood captain) and then meet their family, judge from their socioeconomic background if they're trustworthy e.g. are their kids in "GOOD" schools not just a nice house or a car or two / wealthy vs debt trapped - and build rapport.
Rotary club can be a good place to start. As well as church groups and other volunteer places.
THAT is the only way you can successfully get land in the PH - if you're displacing farmers, you may get shot. There are also tons of shoreline land scams involving the New Philippine Army (kinda liberal guerilla group similar to FARC but, nicer) that common money raising method is to forge deeds, demand cash purchase, and then intimidation - this is common for resorts.
tl;dr You gotta go where you're buying the land, talk the talk, walk the walk, wine and dine and make sure you have good friends who went to the top unis in the country and are in law. DLSU, UP, Aeteno should provide good network groups.