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The Where And Why Of China's Global Real Estate Investment Boom

A traditional home on the South Korean island of Jeju
A traditional home on the South Korean island of Jeju

BEIJING — Much has been made recently about Chinese real estate investors, who spend huge sums snapping up foreign property. Tencent Finance, a Chinese online magazine, published a report on the phenomenon this week, in an article titled: "Those Countries Taken Over By Chinese Property Speculators." Here's a breakdown.

South Korea:South Korea's geographical proximity to their country has attracted many Chinese buyers, who have collectively purchased 160,000 square meters in Seoul and 9.14 million square meters in holiday destination Jeju Island over the last few years. As a result, real estate prices on Jeju Island have more than doubled.

Japan: The country's environment and quality houses attract Chinese real estate investors to Japan. Last year alone, they poured over $2 billion into Japan, contributing to a 30% increase in its property prices.

Singapore: Singapore's excellent education system, reputation as the world's "safest city," and large Chinese population make an appealing package for investors in China. In many cases, they actually hope to move to Singapore, or at least to send their children there. Some estimates show more than 10% of the city-state's properties put on the market in recent years were bought by Chinese.

United States: Though regarded by the Chinese Communist Party as a decadent country, the United States is China's top destination for both immigration purposes and property purchases. In the last five years, individual Chinese buyers have spent as much as $110 billion on U.S. property, and that doesn't include money invested in real estate through corporate institutions and trusts.

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Society

What's Spoiling The Kids: The Big Tech v. Bad Parenting Debate

Without an extended family network, modern parents have sought to raise happy kids in a "hostile" world. It's a tall order, when youngsters absorb the fears (and devices) around them like a sponge.

Image of a kid wearing a blue striped sweater, using an ipad.

Children exposed to technology at a very young age are prominent today.

Julián de Zubiría Samper

-Analysis-

BOGOTÁ — A 2021 report from the United States (the Youth Risk Behavior Survey) found that 42% of the country's high-school students persistently felt sad and 22% had thought about suicide. In other words, almost half of the country's young people are living in despair and a fifth of them have thought about killing themselves.

Such chilling figures are unprecedented in history. Many have suggested that this might be the result of the COVID-19 pandemic, but sadly, we can see depression has deeper causes, and the pandemic merely illustrated its complexity.

I have written before on possible links between severe depression and the time young people spend on social media. But this is just one aspect of the problem. Today, young people suffer frequent and intense emotional crises, and not just for all the hours spent staring at a screen. Another, possibly more important cause may lie in changes to the family composition and authority patterns at home.

Firstly: Families today have fewer members, who communicate less among themselves.

Young people marry at a later age, have fewer children and many opt for personal projects and pets instead of having children. Families are more diverse and flexible. In many countries, the number of children per woman is close to or less than one (Singapore, Taiwan, South Korea, Hong Kong among others).

In Colombia, women have on average 1.9 children, compared to 7.6 in 1970. Worldwide, women aged 15 to 49 years have on average 2.4 children, or half the average figure for 1970. The changes are much more pronounced in cities and among middle and upper-income groups.

Of further concern today is the decline in communication time at home, notably between parents and children. This is difficult to quantify, but reasons may include fewer household members, pervasive use of screens, mothers going to work, microwave ovens that have eliminated family cooking and meals and, thanks to new technologies, an increase in time spent on work, even at home. Our society is addicted to work and devotes little time to minors.

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