国际先驱论坛报 中国房地产驱动上市热

10月8日，北京房地产开发商Soho中国在其香港第一个交易日的股价飙升15%——这是创造中国房地产大亨新阶层的最新热点上市。

　　Soho的壮观登场正值中国股价暴涨以及一些最大的城市经历汹涌的建设热潮被彻底改造的时期。

　　尽管政府努力遏制房地产投机，但中国的房价继续上涨，助长更多的建设，以及大地产公司上市的热潮。事实上，在过去纪念，上市热潮已经让一些个人坐拥数十亿美元的身家。当美国遭受次贷危机，中国房地产投资者却在庆祝并推动房价和房产股价到达壮观的高度。

　　今年，中国房地产开发商碧桂园（Country Garden）在香港股市上市。它最大的股东是创始人26岁的女儿杨惠妍（Yang Huiyan）。她如今应该是中国首富，持有约值160亿美元的股份。

　　北京大学副金融教授佩蒂斯（Michael Pettis）表示，这是市场上最好的一类演出。在房地产业，你可以借钱获得廉价的土地，然后高价出售，从而获得特大的利润；然后你进入股市，收入估价大约是40到50倍。因此你是在泡沫之上加泡沫。

　　Soho中国及房地产同行的崛起是中国狂热的经济增长、膨胀的雄心以及空前的建设热潮（促使世界商品价格上涨）的象征。当中国快速城市化，数百万人被重新部署（有时要违背他们的意愿），为四处蔓延的新房地产开发及所谓的中心商业区让路。然而，许多大计划是真正的“李维城（Levittowns）”，有时候，多达50栋一模一样的高层建筑拥挤在一片土地上。

　　北卡罗莱纳大学城市与地区规划系助理教授将出书《水泥龙（The Concrete Dragon）》描述中国壮观的崛起。他表示和当今中国相比，美国的城市发展中最壮丽的篇章也黯然失色。

　　那些在大城市中心附近持有有价值土地的幸运开发商如今坐享巨大的财富。当观察家编汇中国首富榜的时候，名单上往往出现房地产开发商的名字。当然，关于房地产低迷时期以及最近通胀的威胁的警告是有的，分析家担心通胀可能放缓经济，特别是在北京举办2008年奥运会后。

　　但尽管有种种房地产泡沫、非法土地攫取以及腐败的开发商的讨论，中国仍然处于房地产财源滚滚的阵痛期。（作者 David Barboza）

Real estate in China drives an IPO boom

By David Barboza

Published: October 8, 2007

SHANGHAI: Shares of Soho China, a Beijing property developer, soared 15 percent Monday on their first day of trading in Hong Kong - the latest hot public stock offering that is creating a new class of Chinese real estate tycoons.

The spectacular debut of Soho, which values the company at $6 billion, comes at a time when stock prices in China are skyrocketing and some of the country's biggest cities are being radically transformed by a huge building boom.

Despite government efforts to curb real estate speculation in China, housing prices continue to rise, fueling even more construction, and also a frenzy of initial public stock offerings by big real estate companies.

Indeed, over the past few years, the IPO boom has already made some individuals worth billions of dollars.

While the United States is in the grips of a subprime mortgage crisis, investors in Chinese real estate are celebrating and pushing the value of housing and housing shares to spectacular heights.

The public offering Monday raised nearly $1.7 billion for Soho China, or as much as Google raised in its 2004 initial stock offering in the United States.

The founders of Soho, Pan Shiyi and Zhang Xin, a husband-and-wife team known for their stylish Beijing developments, are now worth close to $4 billion on paper, based on the closing price Monday.

A Chinese real estate developer named Country Garden raised $1.9 billion in a Hong Kong stock offering this year.

The largest shareholder in Country Garden is the founder's 26-year-old daughter, Yang Huiyan. She is now believed to be the richest person in China, with shares valued at about $16 billion.

Last year, the richest individual in China, according to Forbes, was Wong Kwong Yu, a retailing entrepreneur who was said to be worth $2.3 billion.

"This is sort of the best play in this market," said Michael Pettis, an associate professor of finance at Beijing University and a former investment banker. "In real estate you're getting overinflated profits from borrowing money to get cheap land and then selling at inflated prices; and then you've got a stock market that is valuing a dollar of earnings at about 40 or 50 times. So you've got a bubble on top of a bubble."

The rise of Soho China and its real estate peers is emblematic of this country's feverish economic growth, its hulking ambitions and its unprecedented construction boom, which is helping drive up the prices of commodities around the world.

With China rapidly urbanizing, millions of people are being relocated, sometimes against their will, to make way for sprawling new housing developments and so-called CBDs, or central business districts.

Many big projects, however, are veritable urban Levittowns, erected in helter-skelter fashion, sometimes with as many as 50 look-alike high-rises crowded onto a single plot of land.

"The scale of what's happening there is unimaginable," said Thomas Campanella, an assistant professor of city and regional planning at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, and the author of the forthcoming book, "The Concrete Dragon," a portrait of China's spectacular rise.

"The greatest chapters of American urban development just pale in comparison to what is happening today in China," he said.

Property developers who were lucky enough to get hold of valuable land near major urban centers are now sitting on enormous fortunes.

When observers compile lists of the wealthiest individuals in China, the ranks are often well stocked with developers of real estate, like Xu Rongmao of Shimao, who is worth an estimated $6.7 billion, and Chen Zhuolin of Agile Properties, who is worth about $4.7 billion.

There have been warnings, of course, about a real estate downturn and the threats of a recent jump in inflation, which some analysts fear could slow the economy, particularly after Beijing holds the 2008 Olympics.

But in spite of the talk of housing bubbles, illegal land grabs and even corrupt developers, China remains in the throes of the real estate bonanza.

Global investment banks are among those cashing in.

Goldman Sachs and HSBC took Soho public. Merrill Lynch, UBS and Credit Suisse have played a role in big real estate offerings.

And Morgan Stanley has done more than most, helping raise $6 billion over the past three years by taking eight Chinese real estate companies public, including Shimao, Agile and Country Garden.

Most of the developers have seen their shares climb even higher after listing.

Shares of Shimao, for instance, are up 288 percent in just over a year; and Agile's stock has climbed nearly 400 percent in less than two years.

For Soho China, the latest red-hot offering, going public means paying down debt and refilling the coffers of a company that already has prime land in Beijing's central business district, where a crush of luxury residences and office towers are going up, seemingly all at once.

Zhang, a former Goldman Sachs investment banker, and her husband, Pan, a pioneering real estate developer who also has a popular blog, have used a blend of marketing wizardry, savvy land deals and international architects to create a fortune in the span of just over a decade.

The company's projects, like Soho Jianwei in central Beijing, are populated by entrepreneurs, movie stars, Western executives and even Starbuck's coffee shops.

"I'm really amazed at what I've been seeing in China," Campanella said. "It's as if home improvement and decoration are the No. 1 avocations there."