The Release and Symposium of the China Urban Competitiveness Report (2006) was Held in Hong Kong

The 2006 Releaseand Symposium of the China Urban Competitiveness Report was held in Hong Kong on April 7, 2006. The Symposium was sponsoredby the Better Hong Kong Foundation, and jointly organized by the NationalAcademy of Economics Strategy of CASS and the Hong Kong Institute ofAsia-Pacific Studies of the Chinese University of HongKong. The composition of the 2006 Blue Book of Urban Competitiveness was led byDr. Ni Pengfei of the CASS National Academy of Economics Strategy, along withnearly 100 urban competitiveness experts from famous universities and institutionsin Mainland China, China’s Taiwan, Hong Kong and Macau, such as Nankai University,Tsinghua University, Peking University, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, The University ofMacau and Taiwan Chengchi University, etc.

The annual themeof the report was “Real estate market: the barometer of urban China”. For thefirst time the report included nine cities in the regions of Hong Kong, Macauand Taiwan into the research system, and summarized the core strengths of 200 Chinesecities. The report measured and compared the comprehensive competitiveness of the200 cities, and the top 20 cities were: Hong Kong, Taipei, Shanghai, Beijing,Shenzhen, Guangzhou, Kaohsiung, Macau, Hsinchu, Keelung, Ningbo, Suzhou,Tainan, Tianjin, Xiamen, Dalian, Wuxi, Shenyang, and Qingdao.

The report alsofound out that cities with large-scale real estate industry tended to havestrong competitiveness; the real estate price would be higher in cities withmore competitive strength, but if the price went too high, it would also affectthe enhancement of the city’s competitiveness. The report proposed the standardof determining the health of real estate market and found out that among 35 largeand middle scale cities, the majority of them had an unhealthy real estatemarket: only 7 of them could be called healthy, 21 unhealthy and 7 very unhealthy.

Scholars such asProfessor Shen Jianfa from the Hong Kong Institute of Asia-Pacific Studies of the Chinese University of Hong Kong / Department of Geographyand Resource Management analyzed the relationship between urban development andreal estate in Hong Kong. According to their study, the long-term stableeconomic growth in Hong Kong, coupled with the feature of “investment hedging”in real estate market, had created the city’s increasing demand for property. Therapidly rising real estate prices would certainly drive up the cost of runningbusiness, affecting some industries and sectors. But these did not impact HongKong’s economy, because of the emergence of the more competitive advancedservices industries in financial, trade, logistics and other sectors.

The experience inHong Kong’s real estate market was not entirely suitable for other cities. HongKong's high prices in land, house, and wage were complemented with its taxsystem, public housing system and social welfare policies to keep Hong Kong’seconomy to remain competitive. The competitiveness of cities depended on thedevelopment of competitive industries. The development of real estate industrywas closely related with the city’s economic development. However, whether thereal estate price ran high or low was ultimately depended on thecompetitiveness of the city.