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Comment by yannickmahe | Hacker News Reader

There will undoubtedly be a crash. Prices are rising for two reason:

-Speculative buying (that's the cause of all the empty appartments in places no one wants to buy)

-Cultural reasons. When a guy wants to marry a girl, he has to own his own appartment. No when, no ifs, no but. If a girl were to marry a guy with no apartment her whole family would lose face. Because of the sex imbalance in China, there is a large "demand" of girls, and little "supply", so the "price" (quality, location and numbers of appartments) keeps rising. So this means parents of boys are constantly upping the ante, to get more and bigger appartments to try and ensure their son gets married. (my girlfriend is Chinese, so I am very aware of these issues...)

While the first reason would seem to indicate that the bubble would burst sooner rather than later, the second one seems to indicate that demand for appartment won't fall anytime soon.

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Yes, this is the other reason for China's interest in Africa. It's not only minerals they're interested in... But also doing something about ~50M young Chinese men who will never be able to marry a Chinese girl. No-one ever thought about the long term effect of a one-child policy + a cultural preference for sons (or they'd simply have passed laws incentivizing daughters). I can't imagine the locals will be too happy when they figure this out...

I always figured North Korea would be the obvious target for that kind of exploitation.

I don't think you can say that these 50M guys simply won't get married.

Have you thought about what would happen if china lowered the marriage age for women? 50 million+ new women in the marriage market. Problem delayed.

There's already age disparity in chinese marriages. The idea that millions of young men simply won't get married is absurd. They'll just wait longer, or expand the group of women they're willing to marry.

And I assume you're joking about chinese men marrying african women.

Indeed, delayed not solved.

I don't necessarily mean marrying African women (tho' why not? historically colonists have always enthusiastically intermarried) but being out of China and working on labour-intensive projects like major infrastructure. Societies with lots of frustrated young men in them tend to go horribly wrong, Afghanistan is an example, in a society where there is a shortage of women anyway due to cultural reasons (e.g. healthcare), and successful men have 4 wives, and there is no social scene for teenagers and certainly no extramarital sex, what do the young men do? They run off into the mountains and it all goes a bit Lord of the Flies.

Was your girlfriend born in China? It seems this kind of mentality has gradually changed with the rise of the communist regime. China is now one of the most feminist countries in the world with women and men on equal feet in most spheres of society. My girlfriend is also Chinese, has always lived in China and as far as I know, her family doesn't care whether I own an apartment or not. Perhaps the rules are different for foreigners...

Probably depends on the family. In my case (she was indeed born in China), it's not so much her parents as her who cares a lot about that.

When discussing the characteristics of their ideal husband, Chinese girls will occasional joking (not really) say, "有车，有房，父母双亡”。 Which means, "[He] has a car, a house, and both of his parents are dead." Filial piety is hard work.

I guess most spheres excludes family, the most important one for some people. Take for example homosexuality. You can work with, play with, and be friends with a gay person. But come out to your family and start dating someone of the same sex is a big problem.

The rules are definitely different for foreigners.

You are assumed to be wealthy or at least a very good bet to eventually be wealthy.

As well, you can guarantee citizenship in a First World country. Have you encountered the term "filial piety" yet?

You're white, for most Chinese families that is very good, better than owning an apartment. Plus you're from Canada, that is automatic opportunity for their daughter and the rest of her family. Given Canada's preference for uniting families in immigration policy if you marry her then the better part of her immediate family gets in much easier.

Some of my friends (guys no less) get paid to go to clubs in China just because the owner wants to associate it as a place white people go.

I married my Chinese wife last year & I understand perfectly well that a lot of compromised had to be made by the family just because I'm a Westerner. I own a flat, back home in Europe, but it's not paid off 100% so "that doesn't count". Also, in their eyes, instead of me tucking away a few 100000 in my propety they see a few 100000 "lost" because I invested in European real estate and not Chinese real estate. I spent a few days in a newly-built 'city' of summer houses just outside of Shanghai. Lots of places that people don't even bother to fully furnish since they are planning to flip them anyway.

Apparently,even though you have a chinese girlfriend,you don't seem to understand much about Chinese people or culture. Trust me, everyone of her family care about whether you own (or have the ability to own) an apartment or not (including their dog if they have one) though I doubt they will say it to your face.

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