The Paper Journalist Zhang Chengjie
In Fuxin, Liaoning, at the end of August, there was frequent rain. After the summer heat faded away, the humid autumn wind brought long-lost comfort.
In Xinyuan Community, Chengnan Street, Taiping District, Fuxin City, a large number of residents can be seen sitting leisurely chatting and playing cards after a meal.
What is different is that most of the topics they talk about are housing prices in their own and surrounding communities.
"A set of 38 square meters of rough house, 15,000 yuan, average price of 398 yuan per square meter; a set of 56 square meters of rough house, 20,000 yuan, average price of 357 yuan per square meter; a set of 60 square meters of elevator building, 45,000 yuan Yuan, the average price per square meter is 750 yuan...how? It’s very low, but I can’t sell one set." Yu (a pseudonym) is 51 years old this year and opened a real estate agency in Xinyuan Community, mainly operating Xinyuan , Chengnan Community (early shed reform), Mijia Community, etc.
When it comes to the sale and transaction of real estate in this area, Da is very helpless.
Fuxin City, located in the low mountain and hilly area of western Liaoning Province, is the central city in northwestern Liaoning Province and one of the important cities in the Shenyang Economic Zone. It once had the largest open-pit coal mine in Asia and was known as the "Northern Coal City" .
Today, Fuxin, which has faded from the "Coal City", has once again entered the public eye because of its low-priced housing.
A reporter from The Paper (www.thepaper.cn) went to Fuxin and learned that the "cabbage price" houses in Fuxin mainly exist in the Xinyuan community where it is located and the nearby Mijia community. These communities are basically far away from the urban area. The sheds were changed back to relocation houses instead of commercial houses in the usual sense.
A low-priced housing community. The pictures in this article are those of The Paper, Zhang Chengjie
But what is reflected behind the "cabbage price" listings is the transformation dilemma of resource-exhausted cities.
"Cabbage price" shed changed back to move house
The Paper inquired about a number of second-hand housing transaction websites and found that low-priced housing in Fuxin City is generally concentrated in Chengnan Community (early shed reform), Xinyuan Community, Mijia Community, Ping An West, Gaode Community, etc., and some housing units per square meter The unit price of rice is basically around 500 yuan.
Screenshot of low-cost listings on a website
Screenshot of low-cost listings on a website
According to the information displayed on the low-cost housing on the Internet, when the The Paper visited the community where the housing is located, they noticed that these communities are large in scale, with clean and tidy environments, and more like a large community, including supermarkets, pharmacies, restaurants, kindergartens, and fitness centers. The equipment supporting facilities are also relatively complete.
However, the houses are old, far from the city, and some are even close to wasteland, and the houses are relocated from sheds.
Xinyuan Community
Yu told The Paper that he moved back to Chengnan Community (early shed reform) at the end of 2006. At that time, some people in the community bought houses in the urban area, and some people had multiple apartments when they moved back home. Many people had a demand for selling houses. He saw Among the business opportunities, a real estate agency was opened in the community in 2007.
"At that time, 55 square meters of plain decoration, a better one could sell for around 90,000 yuan. The best time for business was in the second half of 2012. Many foreigners came to buy houses for their children to study and settle down, and a set of agency fees could earn 5,000 yuan."
As the business got better, in 2015, Yu bought real estate in Xinyuan community again. "Although it was all relocated from the shed, this is a new community after all. The house in the south of the city is a bit older, but it is better to be sold out, otherwise it will definitely be pressured now. "In my hands", Da said frankly, the houses nowadays are becoming less and less valuable, and the business is not easy to do. It is difficult to sell a house in a month, and many real estate agencies in the community quit. "It was not easy to sell here. Now many people are losing money and want to get rid of them. There are many houses of around 20,000, but if you want, you can find 5 in minutes."
News reporters from The Paper looked at a 6-story rough house on the top floor of the Chengnan Community (early shed reform). It was built around 2008. It is about 38 square meters. The price is 15 thousand yuan, which is equivalent to 395 yuan per square meter. For a long time, the cracks were serious, and there was water seepage in the balcony.
"The quality of the shed will not be too good. If you don't live for a long time, you will have this kind of problem. It is on the top floor. There are many problems that have not been taken care of for a long time. No matter how cheap it is, no one cares." Da said.
38 square meters priced at 10,000 5
In Xinyuan Community, a 60-square-meter high-rise elevator building rough house was built after 2015. The house is relatively new and the price is only 45,000.
More than the introduction, "The elevator building only sold for 45 thousand. If I didn't even dare to think about it before, now this community is a lot vacant, but even then no one buys it."
Xinyuan Community Elevator Building
The Mijia Community, which was also relocated from the shed, has more idle houses. When you walk into the community, you can see glass with advertisements for selling houses everywhere. The community is extremely deserted. The reporter went to the fourth floor as a house buyer. A 55-square-meter house, the price of this rough house is 25,000 yuan.
The homeowner said that his whole family had moved to Shenyang. At that time, there were a few more houses, and there were as many as 10 sets of houses similar to those left unused and relatives. Now they don’t want to make money, just let them go.
Looking out from the glass of the house, there is a green area, "Living here is very clean, far from the city, you can feel the rural life." The owner recommended.
Outside the window of a room in Mijia Community
Compared with Mijia Community and Xinyuan Community, which are 13 kilometers away from the city center, Ping An West Community is relatively close to the city, about 7 kilometers away from the city center.
In the community, a 55-square-meter top-floor rough house sold online was sold for 20,000 yuan, with an average price of 364 yuan per square meter. The house has no intuitive problems.
The intermediary said that 20,000 yuan including the direct transfer of the household to the name, water, electricity, and property fees will help to buy it.
Since the homeowner is a foreigner, it is so cheap if it is eager to get rid of it.
Ping An West Community
But not all houses in Fuxin are so cheap and difficult to sell. The unit price of new houses in the city center is generally around 3900 yuan per square meter. Branded real estates such as Country Garden and Xiangyu remain above 5,000 yuan per square meter, and sales are in short supply. , The good floors are basically sold out.
And most second-hand housing prices remain at around 2,700 yuan per square meter, and there is no "cabbage price".
Of course, compared with housing prices in many southern cities and even counties, such prices are already too low.
Li Ping (pseudonym), a taxi driver in Fuxin, said frankly: “The fastest drop in housing prices is when the original sheds are converted back to relocation houses. Most of the people who lived in the past were working in mines. With the closure of multiple coal mines, many people can only There are not many people going out to work, and the quality of the house is not good compared with the commercial housing. If you sincerely want to live, you will not buy it. The more people go, the more houses there are."
Difficulties in the transformation of resource-exhausted cities behind the "cabbage price"
There was Hegang in the past and Fuxin today, all because of the "cabbage price" houses on the hot search.
Similar to Hegang, Fuxin used to be an important coal base in the past. It flourished because of coal. At its peak, the annual output of Haizhou Mine alone accounted for more than 10% of the country's total.
However, after years of mining, Fuxin's coal resources have been exhausted, and the single coal-dominated industry has begun to decline, and the city has fallen into the predicament of "mine exhaustion and city decline".
Fuxin Haizhou Open-pit Mine National Mine Park
In 2001, Fuxin City was designated by the State Council as "the country's first resource-exhausted city transformation pilot", and then began a difficult transformation exploration.
However, the urban "resource dependence" has not been completely resolved with the proposed transformation.
According to Wang Yeqiang, director and researcher of the Institute of Ecological Civilization of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, due to Fuxin’s long-term dependence on coal resource mining, coal power accounts for more than half of the local economy, and lacks the impetus to adjust the industrial structure in urban economic development. The urban industrial structure is relatively simple in time.
After Fuxin City proposed the transformation, coal remained a pillar industry for a long time, and the local economy still has not shaken off its dependence on traditional resources.
Xinhua News Agency reported in 2017 that although these coal cities have declared resource depletion, the output curve of state-owned coal mines once pointed upwards, which closely matched the market trend of the "Golden Decade": Fuxin Mining Group produced 8.26 million tons of raw coal in 2001, and 2011 The annual increase to 12.1 million tons, as the market declines, the output plunges, and in 2015 it dropped to 7.71 million tons.
In the past, Fuxin used coal as its pillar industry. Around 2015, the coal industry declined. During this period, employment opportunities decreased and population exodus occurred.
The above report mentioned that in 2015, Fuxin Mining Group's operating income suddenly dropped by 3 billion yuan, and its total profit changed from positive to negative.
2016 was even worse. As there was no coal to mine, 6 local coal mines were closed and 28,000 employees faced transfers.
A financial officer of the group revealed that in 2016, 76% of the social security gap in Fuxin City came from this large taxpayer for many years.
In addition, The Paper inquired about the 2015 and 2019 National Economic and Social Development Statistical Bulletins of Fuxin City. It noted that from the city’s registered population data, it was 1.895 million at the end of 2015, 1.889 million at the end of 2016, and 1.862 million at the end of 2017. At the end of 2018, it was 1.85 million, and in 2019 it was 1.837 million, a decrease of 58,000 in 4 years. Fuxin’s population has been in a state of net outflow.
In addition, according to the National Economic and Social Development Statistical Communiqués of the cities in Liaoning Province in the last three years, Fuxin’s GDP ranked last in the three-year average, with 42.17 billion yuan, 44.6 billion yuan and 48.81 billion yuan from 2017 to 2019. Dalian City in the same province is 736.39 billion yuan, 766.85 billion yuan, and 70.17 billion yuan, ranking first in the past three years.
Among them, Fuxin achieved a GDP of 48.81 billion yuan in 2019, and a per capita GDP of 27945 yuan, which is less than 40% of the national average.
my country's per capita GDP is 70,892 yuan.
"According to statistics, in 2019, the average price of commercial housing in Fuxin and Hegang in Northeast China was around 3,500 yuan and 2,900 yuan respectively. The peaks appeared in 2014 and were around 3,900 yuan and 3,500 yuan respectively. The obvious change is that both have experienced a The process of slowly rising and then falling is basically the same.” Wang Yeqiang, director of the Institute of Ecological Civilization of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences and researcher Wang Yeqiang, analyzed the surging news that the decline of these resource-based cities will inevitably lead to the decline of housing prices and the decline of leading industries. If the continued industries cannot keep up, the economic recession will inevitably fail to retain people.
With the outflow of population and the development of population agglomeration in the central city, those relocation houses with poor location and poor supporting facilities will face the risk of being abandoned.
Where is the transition
Wang Yeqiang said that economic recession and net population outflow are actually a phenomenon of urban shrinkage and a common phenomenon in the process of urban development in the world.
In some areas of our country, many cities are also facing the problem of local shrinkage, but the performance of the Northeast region is more obvious, and transformation is the inevitable choice facing these cities.
In recent years, with the joint efforts of the central and local governments, although most depleted cities have achieved economic growth, their transformation goals are far from complete, and many resource-depleted cities are still on the way to transformation.
In Wang Yeqiang's view, the country has given many policies to the revitalization of Northeast China for so many years, but industrial transformation and upgrading are still difficult.
In addition to external environmental factors, a key reason is that the institutional mechanisms are not working.
"Because of the long-term constraints of traditional economic development thinking, the economic status of heavy industry is deeply ingrained, and it is difficult to change in the short term. The industry development awareness of independence, diversification and flexibility is not enough. What Northeast lacks is not technological innovation, but institutional innovation. Therefore, the Northeast industrial transformation To upgrade, it is necessary to focus on overcoming the institutional mechanisms that hinder innovation. Especially in the era of industrial intelligence, use the basic advantages of the old northeast industrial base to promote transformation and upgrading through integration with new technologies and new industries, and to improve the business environment. Realize revitalization." Wang Yeqiang said.
Wang Yeqiang said that taking Fuxin as an example, from the perspective of its own development, it is first necessary to vigorously introduce specialized talents in environmental governance and use advanced technologies in environmental monitoring and governance at home and abroad to improve the city's ecological environment as soon as possible.
Nowadays, Fuxin City has serious environmental pollution. It is urgent to increase environmental governance to ensure that the ecological environment is improved year by year, and to create a livable environment.
The second is to improve the urban industrial system, overcome dependence on traditional coal resources, and develop emerging industries.
It is worth noting that Fuxin has also begun to explore new industries from the perspective of environmental governance and ecological restoration.
Xinhua News Agency reported in 2019 that Fuxin plans to build a century-old track city. The planned area of the track city project is about 30 square kilometers, of which 24 square kilometers are abandoned mining areas and 6 square kilometers are urban areas to be built.
It is planned to build 12 various "themed race tracks" in an abandoned mining area of 24 square kilometers, relying on the current status and distribution of the mine pits. At the same time, it is planned to build a cluster of characteristic towns around the race track, covering the red flag race track town and the race track paradise town. , Ice and Snow World Town, Auto and Motorcycle Race Competition Town, etc.
The planning and construction of the 6-square-kilometer urban area to be built takes vocational education (focusing on the development of general service majors) as the main development direction, and strives to build a complex of education, R&D, and maker industries.
Wang Yeqiang also stated that in addition to internal motivation, we must also actively seize external opportunities to solve our own difficulties, including development opportunities such as high-speed rail and airports, continuously improve regional infrastructure and transportation network construction, actively integrate into the domestic economic cycle, and transform the local industry. Development creates opportunities.
For example, the Beijing-Shenzhen high-speed rail, which is expected to be opened to traffic by the end of this year, starts from Beijing, passes through Shunyi District, Huairou District, Miyun District, Chengde City, Hebei Province, Chaoyang City and Fuxin City, Liaoning Province, and ends in Shenyang.
After the opening of the Beijing-Shenzhen high-speed rail to traffic, it will further expand the coverage of the high-speed rail network in Northeast China and accelerate the formation of east-west high-speed rail access channels, which will greatly facilitate the travel of people along the line. It is of great significance to promote regional economic and social development and assist the comprehensive revitalization of Northeast China The most direct thing is that housing prices may also increase.
In addition, Wang Yeqiang also mentioned that with the introduction of the "One Belt, One Road" initiative, the vitality of economic and trade cooperation in Northeast Asia has increased. How to seize this golden historical opportunity is something that many cities in Northeast China should explore.