Professor Weiping Wu was quoted in a November 9 article in the Financial Times titled "China economy: will hot property market threaten post-pandemic rebound?"
In the article, which focuses on the property developer Evergrande, Professor Wu discusses the rush to develop land owned by local governments in China.
"The offshore dollar bond market has been just one part of a diverse array of financing options for developers, with even greater sums being borrowed from banks on the Chinese mainland. That money in turn has funded a nonstop rush to buy and develop land owned by local governments.
That makes them an important part of the fiscal model in a country that 'is far more decentralised in terms of fiscal relations than many, many other countries around the world', says Weiping Wu, a professor of Urban Planning at Columbia University in New York. 'That rush for land isn’t just pushed by developers,' she says. 'Municipalities also have incentives to lease out land. It’s a big source of extra-budgetary revenue.'"
Read the full article here.
