In recent years, soaring housing prices have become commonplace in first- and second-tier cities. Although various localities have adopted macroeconomic control policies to slow down the rapid growth of housing prices, the high housing prices in these cities are still unattainable for most wage earners.
As a result, they instead considered buying a home in their home county. This has led to the fact that housing prices in the county have also begun to increase significantly. As a result, we have seen such a peculiar phenomenon: at the same time as the housing prices in the county, should we follow the trend to buy houses in the county? This makes people think deeply.
When local finances are unable to meet the spending needs of the county** and some public affairs must be completed, the county** may need to form liabilities by borrowing from banks or corporations.
This situation is prevalent in many counties** and is quite numerous. Some places are even saddled with huge debts of tens of billions. According to data released by the National Audit Office on December 30, 2013, as of the end of June 2013, the county** debt that was liable for repayment was 39,5736 billion yuan, and the debt with guarantee liability is 34880.4 billion yuan, and the debt that may bear a certain rescue liability is 73575.4 billion yuan.
According to the data, the average annual growth rate of county-level ** debt is 2659%, which is higher than the average annual growth rate of provincial ** debt of 1441% and the average annual growth rate of municipal ** debt is 1736%。
The debt burden of third- and fourth-tier counties is due to two key reasons. On the one hand, in 1994, China implemented the reform of the financial management system of the tax-sharing system, which clarified the responsibilities and powers of the government and the local government in fiscal revenue, but the right to expenditure and the power of affairs were not clearly defined, resulting in the unclear definition of financial rights and powers between the municipal and county levels.
The municipal level will keep a large amount of tax at the municipal level through local tax sharing, resulting in an increased burden on the county level and having to borrow to meet the normal operation of the city.
At the same time, there are huge arrears in social security such as pensions for residents in China's third- and fourth-tier counties, resulting in a deficit in the first finance. In the modern market economy, it is an important responsibility to establish and improve a comprehensive social security system and realize the basic fairness and justice of the whole society.
However, due to the large number of elderly people in the county, after the establishment of a comprehensive social security system, the pension that this part of the elderly should receive has become a historical debt.
Before the establishment of the social security system, many old people who are now receiving pensions and medical insurance premiums did not pay any insurance premiums, forming social security arrears in various counties, which increased the debt burden of the county.
Housing prices in first-tier cities have been fairly stable, but prices in third- and fourth-tier counties have begun to rise sharply. Housing prices in many third- and fourth-tier counties have reached tens of thousands of yuan, which has led to concerns about whether there is a real estate bubble in these places.
So, what is the driving force behind the housing prices in the third and fourth tier counties? First of all, when house prices skyrocket, active transactions in the real estate market can bring a lot of transaction tax to the local**.
More importantly, when the real estate market is hot, the local land price will also be large**, which will bring huge land sales income to the local **, thereby alleviating the pressure of local debt.
In addition, in order to preserve the original meaning, some words and sentence patterns have been adjusted, but the core idea has not changed.
According to data from the People's Bank of China's Mortgage Supplementary Loan to support shantytown renovation, each household can receive an average of 500,000 yuan in compensation. According to the calculation of an average of 10 third- and fourth-tier cities in each province, each city can be divided into 260,000 sets, 500,000 yuan each, which means that a total of 13 billion funds have entered the real estate market in third- and fourth-tier cities, which has greatly enhanced the vitality of the local real estate market.
At the same time, many young salaried people have also begun to choose to buy houses in the county, which has made the county's housing prices soar. Although China's current per capita disposable income is only one-fifth of that of developed countries, housing prices are close to the level of developed countries.
Although China has regulated the real estate market many times, and housing prices have been the best for decades, the effect of regulation is not obvious.
In the current period of China's economic transformation, many third- and fourth-tier counties are facing the dilemma of weak economic growth. Due to the relatively weak industrial base of the county and the influence of environmental protection policies, many industries that pollute the environment have been banned, and there is a lack of enterprises with sufficient strength to take over the operation, resulting in many factories becoming abandoned places.
Due to the weak industrial base and scattered population distribution in county-level areas, the development of modern service industry lags behind, resulting in slow economic growth at the county level and unable to reach the national average growth rate.
In the past few years, most county-level areas have regarded land sales and real estate development as the main economic means, and their fiscal revenue has mainly relied on real estate-related taxes.
However, with the strengthening of the country's macroeconomic control, the real estate market tends to stabilize, and the number of available land transfers and transactions has decreased, which has had a direct impact on the growth of the county-level economy.
China's third- and fourth-tier counties have weak economic growth, facing problems such as abandoned factories and huge debts, and their development situation is very difficult. So, what is the reason for this state of affairs?
In my opinion, the main reason is that China's third- and fourth-tier counties are overly dependent on the land economy and lack of industrial base and economy. The land economy has become the main fiscal revenue of the county, and the over-reliance on land finance has led to the continuous rise in housing prices, and the financial pressure on the county has increased.
At the same time, the huge debt burden has also lagged behind the development of infrastructure construction and modern service industries in the county.
The author is convinced that to improve the living standards of China's third- and fourth-tier counties, it is necessary to identify and solve the core factors that lead to this problem. From a macro perspective, how can we improve the situation of these cities?
How to help small and medium-sized enterprises develop in difficult situations? What we cannot ignore is that the lack of industrial support and policy support funds is one of the main reasons. Although some places have ideas, they are unable to industrialize these things, and cannot make full use of modern industries such as online business markets and express logistics to build local industrial clusters.
In the process, we must address the problem of local over-reliance on land finance and unreasonable skyrocketing housing prices. Only in this way can we reduce the financial burden of the local government, make it have greater autonomy, travel lightly, and help small and medium-sized enterprises to develop better in the current environment.
Only when they get rid of the financial dependence on land can local governments more effectively implement policies to stabilize housing prices, without being as constrained as before. To revive the local economy, especially to deal with the large number of abandoned factories, it is necessary to give greater autonomy to the local government.
Since ancient times,"The imperial power is not under the county"The concept is essentially to give the county level more autonomy to manage. In order to promote the development of the county-level economy, it is necessary to open up diversified financing channels for the county-level government, carry out capital operation, and introduce a variety of funds to alleviate the historical financial burden.
Finally, in order to revitalize the development of the county, we should scientifically divide the responsibilities of the local government, reasonably define the scope of fiscal expenditure at all levels, and gradually realize that the local government bears the expenditure of the local government, so as to achieve a clear division of labor and rational resource allocation, so that the local government can focus more on local development.
I sincerely hope that the local government can find a suitable solution as soon as possible, not only to control the fiscal deficit, but also to get rid of debt pressure, so as to promote the prosperity and development of the local economy, the prosperity of industry, and the gradual return of housing prices to stability.