Study title

The 'financialisation' of Chinese housing, land and infrastructure - the use of financial instruments to convert the built environment into investment opportunities - generates momentum and vitality in the Chinese economy and has led to wealth accumulation. This study explores how the Chinese housing boom has been financed in the absence of a more developed financial system, and to what extent the financial sector has contributed to the overall appreciation of housing and land assets. A large questionnaire survey was conducted in six case cities including Shanghai, Shenzhen, Chengdu, Xi'an, Nanjing and Tianjin.The Chinese financial system has fostered rapid economic growth in recent decades through so-called 'land-based financing' (tudi chaizhen) in housing, land and infrastructure development. The 'financialisation' of Chinese housing, land and infrastructure - the use of financial instruments to convert the built environment into investment opportunities - generates momentum and vitality in the Chinese economy and has led to wealth accumulation. Real estate financing instruments such as the real estate investment trust (REITS), mortgage securitisation, reverse mortgages and public-private partnerships (PPP) in infrastructure have been recently invented. On the other hand, traditional real estate financial products such as household mortgages and real estate loans benefit from new internet-based finance. Chinese real estate finance has now entered a phase of 'financial explosion'. However, the concrete channels, complex arrangements and new instruments are not entirely known. This research project aims to investigate how housing, land and infrastructure are actually financed, what are the new financial instruments, to what extent there is a trend of 'financialisation', and what are the risks associated with this transformation. We examine the recent trend of financialisation in terms of the forms and extent of the involvement of both the formal and the...