The World Is Building to Accomdate as
China Has World’s Most Outbound Tourists
An Alarming Map of the 17
Countries With Possible Housing
Bubbles
The 17 countries identified as having potential housing bubbles
Close to a million international tourist touch down into Kota Kinabalu
The world is preparing for China’s
outbound tourist market, especially in
South East Asia where communication
is much easier for the Chinese, nearly
100 million Chinese tourists visited
foreign countries last year, and they
are likely to extend their lead as the
world’s biggest-spending travellers,
state media reported.
A total of 97 million Chinese tourists
left the country in 2013, up 14 million
from the previous year, the state-run
China Daily reported, citing official
data from China’s National Tourism
Administration.
The figures underline the rapid rise
in the numbers of Chinese travelling
abroad, who numbered just 29 million
in 2004.
Chinese travellers spent $102 billion
(RM333.8 billion) overseas in 2012,
making them the world’s biggest
spenders ahead of Germans and US
tourists, and are almost certain to
have surpassed that record last year,
the report said, citing researcher Song
Rui.
China’s economy has boomed over
the past decade, expanding the ranks
of its middle-class who are hungry
for foreign travel after the country’s
decades of isolation in the last
century.
European Union and Asian countries
have moved to ease visa application
procedures for Chinese tourists in
recent years, keen to cash in on their
big-spending habits.
“Chinese tourists spend so much
abroad that some foreigners are
calling us ‘walking wallets’,” Song, a
researcher at the Chinese Academy of
Social Sciences, was quoted as saying.
Hotels and retailers around the
world have stepped up efforts to woo
Chinese visitors.
London’s renowned Harrods
department store says it now has 70
Mandarin-speaking staff and more
than 100 China Unionpay terminals
allowing direct payment from Chinese
bank accounts.
Economist Nouriel Roubini
is warning that 11 countries
are showing indications of
potential housing bubbles
– an alarming prospect for
the global economy, which
is still recovering from the
aftereffects of burst housing
bubbles in the United States
and elsewhere. He identifies
another six countries in which
major urban areas may have
housing bubbles.
Those 17 countries with
possible housing bubbles are
mapped above in red. The
lighter-red countries have
housing bubbles in major
urban areas only. You’ll notice
that this map includes very rich
countries such as Switzerland
and Norway along with
enormous rising economies
such as India and Indonesia.
Perhaps most alarming, if least
surprising, Roubini joins the
rising chorus of economists
warning that China’s housing
market is dangerously overinflated. (He identifies mainland
China as well as Hong Kong..
Here’s the list of countries
identified as having possible
housing bubbles, from West
to East: Canada, France,
Switzerland, Germany, Norway,
Sweden, Finland, Israel, China
(mainland plus Hong Kong),
Singapore, Australia and New
Zealand.
Colleague Neil Irwin explains
what’s going on:
The major economies have
been growing only slowly.
Yet with low interest rates
and aggressive central bank
action across the globe, there
is a giant pool of money that
has to go somewhere. That
somewhere has not been
productive new investments,
like companies building new
factories. Rather, it has come
in the form of people taking
advantage of cheap credit to
bid up the price of existing real
estate in cities from Stockholm
to Sydney.
If these countries do turn out
to have housing bubbles, and if
those bubbles burst, Neil warns
that it could actually be even
worse than last time. Worse.
Perhaps scariest of all, if
Roubini is right, is that if these
are bubbles that eventually
pop, policymakers will not have
the tools they had in 2008 to
cushion the blow. The world’s
central banks, in particular,
don’t have much (arguably any)
room to lower interest rates
further.
Let’s hope these economies
are able to head off potential
bubbles before the burst.
China has certainly been trying,
with decidedly mixed success.
And the countries with possible
housing bubbles in major
urban areas, West to East:
Brazil, United Kingdom (just
London), Turkey, India and
Indonesia.
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