Hacker News new | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submit login

China is doing the same in the EU. In european capitals, they are buying up the properties, increasing the rents and pushing out young couples from renting flats for a reasonable price. There are districts in Budapest where all flats are owned by chinese people. How does it help the EU economies, if they are leasing without contract, without tax, without anything illegally? They came every month, you pay in cash, no trace (but this applies to 99% of hungary renting, so it's the issue with the current rental system), they aren't even injecting money into the economy this way. And it's getting ridiculous that 26-28 year old people cannot rent a flat by themselves and have to resort to renting a single room only for 30-40% of their salaries.



> How does it help the EU economies, if they are leasing without contract, without tax, without anything

You know if they did things by the books the rent will increase? (probably by 20-30%)


It's not china ie chinese government doing it but rather Chinese people purchasing residential properties. Chinese government is interested more in stuff like ports, airports/infrastructure. In actual fact China would prefer the money it's population is spending abroad is spent at home specially since the COVID slow down has slowed it's economic growth. So china restricts money going out of its borders now western countries could help China block it but that would be helpful to Chinese communist government so they don't and that is resulting in their own citizens getting priced out of their own cities.


>It's not china ie chinese government

At least in regards to the US, no one can really know that. The Chinese government technically doesn't own anything in the US anymore. The alarm is being raised because supposedly private Chinese enterprise includes ownership of significant American food production (e.g. largest pork manufacturer), farm land, homes near military facilities, etc. Those are strategically sound holdings for national defense in both countries. Suburbs are built on farm land, etc. It's very difficult to decouple real estate from national defense, really.

That said, "Chinese people" don't own all that much in the US overall when compared with other countries. China is being singled out because they have been caught spying repeatedly. They stood and burned their embassy and refused to allow firefighters in. There is military posturing. They are invading American airspace over the US mainland. All these combined paint such purchases in a suspicious light at the very least.

There's enough evidence to know that the Chinese government is funding at least some of the purchases. It could be most of these purchases. No one can know for sure, not even the individual buyers themselves. Only the Chinese government knows.

I think the same applies in Europe?




Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: