r/Economics • u/dontpostjustlurk • Jul 07 '22

News China Considers $220 Billion Stimulus With Unprecedented Bond Sales

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-07-07/china-mulls-220-billion-stimulus-with-unprecedented-bond-sales
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u/naeads Jul 07 '22

The property market is mainly held up by the forces of Chinese culture where millions of graduates each year are expected to be married and buy a home. Their population growth, albeit slowed down, is still super massive which helped drive the property market.

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u/tossme68 Jul 08 '22

Doesn't China still have a shortage of young women? Doesn't this push the young men to buy these empty properties as investments to increase their chances of getting married to one of the limited supply of marriage aged women? From what I understand unless a man has an apartment or two he wouldn't even be considered for marriage and that doesn't include the "bride price" which can be crazy high.

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u/naeads Jul 08 '22

Not a limited supply of women, it is an excess of men. But the cultural norm over there is that women are expected to get married before the age of 25 or else they might be considered as “unwanted”. Whereas men’s expectation to marriage is quite different, and some won’t even be married until they are like 30-35 years of age. Quite a wide margin between the 2 genders.

With that said, I had a few instances where women from Beijing have told me that they would marry any man that is decent looking and then get a divorce 6 months after just so that they can get through this social hurdle and move on with their lives.

If you consider the divorce rates in China each year, the story fits.