The Diplomat
What Doomed China’s Much-Anticipated Property Market Reform Plan?
Once again, China’s government failed to approve a property tax law, seen as a key part of reforming the real estate sector.
The 2022 National People’s Congress surprised many China observers – not because of what happened, but because of what did not happen. The Chinese government failed to approve a property tax. The Government Work Report did not even mention property market reform.
After the real estate sector’s structural crisis in 2021, reforming the property market seems inevitable, and implementing a property tax is the first step toward property market reform. In an essay in Qiushi, the official theoretical journal of the Chinese Communist Party, top leader Xi Jinping singled out a property tax as the flagship project for property market reform and vital to his “Common Prosperity” campaign. Following Xi’s essay, the National People’s Congress drafted and approved a decision to expand the property tax experiment. Minister of Finance Liu Kun declared that the Ministry must “prepare for property tax experiments.” As a result, an insider of the Chinese government predicted with confidence that the central government would launch property tax during the 2022 National People’s Congress.
HIGHEST-RISK
Global Investing
#1 Chinese Real Estate Market
