中國的房地產市場崩盤可能會阻礙數百萬有前途的職業 (1/2)

Recently Yahoo News on-line reported the following:

China's Housing Crash Could Set Back Millions of Promising Careers (1/2)

Chongjing Li, Charlotte Yang and Tao Zhang

Thu, May 16, 2024 at 5:00 p.m. PDT·7 min read

(Bloomberg) -- Ivy Zhang figured she had it made.

Fresh out of school after studying chemistry, she joined one of China’s biggest property companies in 2016, as the country’s real estate market was taking off. She worked until 11 p.m. every day and was transferred to a bigger city after being designated a “sales champion.” She pampered herself in her limited time off by regularly buying $550 spa packages. Money was so plentiful that she didn’t have to think about it much. “The bank account was just a series of numbers,” Zhang says.

Everybody wanted what Zhang and her colleagues were selling. Owning property was so essential it was often a prerequisite for marriage. Prices never seemed to fall, so condos served the combined functions of wealth storage, insurance and retirement savings. Real estate at one point accounted for about a quarter of gross domestic product, according to Bloomberg Economics. Some estimates were even higher.

But those heady days didn’t last. Even though President Xi Jinping warned that “houses are for living in, not speculation,” by 2021 developers were selling homes faster than they could build them and piling on debt in search of expansion. When the government suddenly cracked down on borrowing, it all fell apart. Many homebuyers were left waiting on stalled construction, sparking angry protests across the country. Developers including Country Garden Holdings Co. and the collapsed giant China Evergrande Group defaulted on bond debts. Government revenue plunged. Images of tracts of empty buildings and uncompleted public works became global symbols of the nation’s waning confidence and disgruntlement with Xi’s handling of the world’s second-largest economy.

And a cohort of young professionals who thought they’d found an escalator into China’s affluent middle class had their life upended. What seemed like a lifelong career turned out to be a moment in a bubble. The slump has tossed some 500,000 people out of the property sector in the three years through 2023, according to Ke Yan Zhi Ku, a real estate research group. That’s not counting workers in related industries such as construction and marketing. They’re all facing setbacks in the middle of their careers, forced to make skill adjustments “on an epic scale,” says Alex Capri, senior fellow at the National University of Singapore. “The property meltdown is feeding a wider sense of somber reflection.”

The days when some real estate companies doled out Mercedes-Benzes as yearend bonuses are a distant memory, but many analysts say this isn’t rock bottom yet. The housing sector’s economic heft may shrink to about 16% of China’s GDP by 2026, according to Bloomberg Economics. That possibility threatens to put about 5 million people—equal to the population of Ireland—at risk of unemployment or reduced incomes, the analysts wrote. Even young workers in their prime are struggling to find jobs, with the youth unemployment rate reaching 15.3% after China revised its data methodology. “People are very depressed and scared,” says Anne Stevenson-Yang, co-founder of J Capital Research Ltd. “The situation is very severe.”

Zhang, 30, who says she helped sell almost 1 billion yuan ($139 million) worth of apartments for Country Garden, has resorted to peddling health supplements on social media to pay the bills. So far she’s earning nowhere near enough, selling three items a month. It’s a far cry from the days when she earned as much as the equivalent of $83,000 a year. She and her husband have postponed having a baby, and she scours the web for discounted offers, cooks her own meals to avoid takeout and minimizes socializing to cut expenses. “If you still want to live like before, you’re basically dreaming,” Zhang says. “If I spent 3,000 yuan in the past, now I’m looking to see if I can cut it down to 2,000. Then I’ll see if I can cut it to a thousand. As long as I can survive.”

The pain isn’t limited to salespeople. Ivan Li, 28, lost his position as an investor relations manager in Hong Kong twice. Most developers stopped issuing dollar bonds in the $203 billion market, among the biggest in the world for high-yield debt when times were good. Investors ceased buying the asset class as prices cratered, and communication between debt holders and companies petered out. “Gradually, as the crisis grew, you could feel that engaging with the likes of overseas investors and analysts became the least of management’s concerns,” Li says.

(to be continued)

Translation

（彭博）—Ivy Zhang 認為她已經成功了。

2016 年，隨著中國房地產市場的起飛，她剛從化學專業畢業，就加入了中國最大的房地產公司之一。 她工作到晚上11點。 每天都在工作，並在被冠稱為“銷售冠軍”後被調往更大的城市。 她在有限的休息時間裡經常購買 550 美元的水療套餐來犒賞自己。 錢已經夠多了，她根本不用想太多。 Zhang說: 「銀行帳戶只是一系列數字」。

每個人都想要 Zhang 和她的同事正在銷售的東西。 擁有物業是如此重要，它往往是婚姻的先決條件。 價格似乎從未下跌，因此公寓兼具財富儲存、保險和退休儲蓄的綜合功能。 據彭博經濟研究稱，房地產一度約佔國內生產毛額的四分之一。 有些估計甚至更高。

但那些令人興奮的日子並沒有持續下去。 儘管習近平主席警告說 “房子是用來住的，不是用來炒的” ，但到 2021 年，開發商出售房屋的速度超過了建造速度，並為擴張而借貸。 當政府突然嚴厲打擊借貸時，一切都崩潰了。 許多購屋者只能等待停滯的施工，引發了全國各地的憤怒抗議。 碧桂園控股有限公司和倒閉的巨頭中國恆大集團等開發商出現債券債務違約。 政府收入銳減。 大片空蕩蕩的建築和未完工的公共工程的圖像成為全球信心下降, 和對習近平處理世界第二大經濟體的不滿的象徵。

一群以為自己找到了通往中國富裕中產階級的自動扶梯年輕的專業人士的生活被顛覆了。 看似終生的職業生涯最終變成了短暫的泡沫。 房地產研究機構 Ke Yan Zhi Ku 的數據顯示，截至 2023 年的三年間，經濟衰退已導致約 50 萬人離開房地產行業。 這還不包括建築和行銷等相關行業的員工。 新加坡國立大學高級研究員 Alex Capri 表示，他們都在職業生涯中面臨挫折，被迫「大規模」進行技能調整。 “房地產崩盤引發了更廣泛的憂鬱反思。”

一些房地產公司發放奔馳汽車作為年終獎金的日子已經成為遙遠的記憶，但許多分析師表示，這還不是最低點。 據彭博經濟研究稱，到 2026 年，房地產行業佔中國 GDP 的比重可能會縮減至 16% 左右。 分析師寫道，這種可能性可能使約 500 萬人（相當於愛爾蘭人口）面臨失業或收入減少的風險。 即使是正值青春年華的年輕勞工也很難找到工作，中國修改計算數據的方法後，青年失業率達15.3%。 J Capital Research Ltd 聯合創始人 Anne Stevenson-Yang 表示： “人們非常沮喪和恐懼” 。 “情況非常嚴峻” 。

30 歲的Zhang女士表示，她曾幫助碧桂園出售了價值近 10 億元人民幣（1.39 億美元）的公寓，她現透過在社群媒體上兜售保健品來支付帳單。 到目前為止，她的收入還遠遠不夠，每個月只賣出三件商品。 這與她年收入相當於 83,000 美元的日子已經相去甚遠。 她和丈夫推遲了生孩子的時間，她在網路上搜尋折扣優惠，自己做飯以避免外賣，並儘量減少社交活動以削減開支。 Zhang說: 「如果你還想像以前一樣生活，那你基本上就是在做夢」。 「如果我以前花3,000元，現在我想看看是否可以減少到2,000元。 然後我看看能不能把它減到一千。 只要我還能活下去」。

這種痛苦不僅限於銷售人員。 28歲的 Ivan Li 曾兩度失去在香港投資關係經理的職位。 大多數開發商停止在價值 2,030 億美元的市場上發行美元債券，在經濟狀況好景時, 這是個世界市場上最大的高收益債券市場之一，。 隨著價格暴跌，投資者停止購買該資產類別, 債權持有人和公司之間的溝通逐漸消失。 Li 說: 「隨著危機的加劇，你會逐漸感覺到與海外投資者和分析師等人打交道成為管理層最不用留意的關注點」。

（待續）