China’s home prices fell 0.03 percent from a month earlier last month, the first decline in a year, said Soufun Holdings Ltd (搜房網), the country’s biggest real-estate Web site owner.
Residential prices rose in 54 of 100 cities tracked by Soufun and fell in 44 cities, with average home values nationwide at 8,877 yuan (US$1,396) a square meter, Soufun said in an e-mailed statement yesterday. Compared with the same month last year, average prices rose 6.15 percent, Soufun said.
China’s efforts to control its property market are at a critical stage and the nation needs to focus on curbing price increases in less-affluent cities, Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao (溫家寶) said on Sept. 1. The government said in July that it would rein in residential prices in smaller cities after it raised down-payment requirements and mortgage rates earlier this year.
Yesterday’s statement showed that price data remain mixed. Among the 10 largest cities, home prices last month dropped 0.23 percent in Shanghai from August and slid 1.39 percent in Chongqing, while Beijing saw a 0.24 percent increase. Compared with September last year, home costs climbed in all 10 cities.
DEADLOCK
China’s property market is in a “deadlock” as demand remains strong even after the government limited the number of homes individuals can buy and tried to cap price gains, State Council Development Research Center deputy director Lu Zhongyuan (盧中原) said at a briefing in Beijing last week. The government will probably maintain property curbs into next year, Lu said.
Housing transactions in Beijing during the first six days of this month plunged 62 percent from the same period last month and shrank nearly 10 percent on year, the Beijing Times reported yesterday, citing local government data.
‘SEVERE’ OUTLOOK
Chinese developers face an “increasingly severe” credit outlook, which may force them to cut prices and turn to costlier sources of funding as sales weaken, Standard & Poor’s said on Sept. 27.
“The worst isn’t over for China’s real-estate developers,” S&P analysts led by Frank Lu (陸楓) wrote in a report. “Developers are bracing themselves for slower sales and lower property prices ahead.”
Among the rows of vibrators, rubber torsos and leather harnesses at a Chinese sex toys exhibition in Shanghai this weekend, the beginnings of an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven shift in the industry quietly pulsed. China manufactures about 70 percent of the world’s sex toys, most of it the “hardware” on display at the fair — whether that be technicolor tentacled dildos or hyper-realistic personalized silicone dolls. Yet smart toys have been rising in popularity for some time. Many major European and US brands already offer tech-enhanced products that can enable long-distance love, monitor well-being and even bring people one step closer to
Malaysia’s leader yesterday announced plans to build a massive semiconductor design park, aiming to boost the Southeast Asian nation’s role in the global chip industry. A prominent player in the semiconductor industry for decades, Malaysia accounts for an estimated 13 percent of global back-end manufacturing, according to German tech giant Bosch. Now it wants to go beyond production and emerge as a chip design powerhouse too, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said. “I am pleased to announce the largest IC (integrated circuit) Design Park in Southeast Asia, that will house world-class anchor tenants and collaborate with global companies such as Arm [Holdings PLC],”
TRANSFORMATION: Taiwan is now home to the largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, thanks to the nation’s economic policies President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) yesterday attended an event marking the opening of Google’s second hardware research and development (R&D) office in Taiwan, which was held at New Taipei City’s Banciao District (板橋). This signals Taiwan’s transformation into the world’s largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, validating the nation’s economic policy in the past eight years, she said. The “five plus two” innovative industries policy, “six core strategic industries” initiative and infrastructure projects have grown the national industry and established resilient supply chains that withstood the COVID-19 pandemic, Tsai said. Taiwan has improved investment conditions of the domestic economy
Sales in the retail, and food and beverage sectors last month continued to rise, increasing 0.7 percent and 13.6 percent respectively from a year earlier, setting record highs for the month of March, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said yesterday. Sales in the wholesale sector also grew last month by 4.6 annually, mainly due to the business opportunities for emerging applications related to artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing technologies, the ministry said in a report. The ministry forecast that retail, and food and beverage sales this month would retain their growth momentum as the former would benefit from Tomb Sweeping Day