In mid-2011, cheery billboards splashed across Beijing appeared a far cry from the economic gloom in the US and Europe. ?Spanish villas?, said one billboard, promising a view of the ?golf course from your window?. Another billboard proclaimed ?Tuscany lifestyle style?, promising a romantic landscape of rolling hills and meadows in a far flung suburb. In other cities, it was the same story. In Shanghai?s Hopson Town, Tudor-style cottages sell a ?slice of UK?.

Over the last decade, the Chinese have been spoilt for choice?villas, terrace houses or modern apartments?but on a scale larger than in India, where similar developments?like Acropolis in Bangalore and Hamilton Court in Gurgaon?are selling similar dreams. Unsurprisingly, a real estate billionaire tops China?s list of the wealthy.

Private property is young because it stood abolished by Mao (until 1976), but was re-instated in the post-Mao period. After a series of gradual measures, the recognition of property was codified in the Property Law of 2007. However, unlike in India, China?s Property Law recognises user rights and not owner rights. Thus, China has what it calls, ?land use rights? (LUR) in urban areas, where the owner of the land is the state and the land is subject to lease (maximum 70 years). In rural areas, cultivated land is owned collectively by the farmers. Besides, each farmer has a plot of residential land, which cannot be transferred or sold.

China?s property boom was the culmination of several factors. Around 2000, the earlier convention that every work-unit assign housing (same as allocation of official quarters in India) came to naught. The trimming of the state sector by default trimmed the work-unit. In the mid-2000s when I visited China, the squat grey

4-5 storey socialist-style houses were being gradually demolished. In tier 2 cities, many of them still stand sublet by owners. A decade ago, Delhiites clamoured for DDA lotteries in Delhi (and similar outfits across India) but that has visibly decreased. In China, it?s the same as housing came to be commodified.

In China too, state-funded welfare housing has not been scrapped but its scope has diminished considerably. There has been a strong retreat of the state from the affordable housing sector. The second cache, related to commodified housing, is also like India: mandarins in rural and urban China looked at land as a source of revenue. Together, these two developments have fuelled a black market for land in China. A government-developers nexus has led to the acquisition of land sometimes on the grounds of ?public interest?. Article 47 of China?s Land Administration Law (public interest clause) is as amorphous as in India.

Farmers in China from the south to the north, from the coast to the interior have rioted in the last decade. The storm over land and property in China is also because the Chinese prefer to own their dwellings rather than rent them. House ownership is tied to marriage eligibility.

A large number of Chinese themselves admit that they are housing slaves, tied to repaying bank loans during their prime working years. The average growth of housing prices has been 10% in the last five years. In 2007, prices dipped but resurged in 2010, with the average growth touching 50%. A large part of China?s stimulus package also went into construction, which kept the market buoyant. But today, property prices are falling to dangerously low levels. The construction of property accounted for 13% of China?s economy last year. In October this year, property transactions fell 39% y-o-y in China?s 15 biggest cities.

The lending surge created by the stimulus in 2009-2010 is yielding to sluggish sales, due to a dip in speculative buyers, mortgage restrictions and credit-tightening by banks. Stories of ghost developments and towns are now an open secret. Developers are feeling the squeeze and so are the banks, and so is the state.

In rural areas, the problem is exacerbated due to land acquisition by the state, often involving meagre compensation. Today, the Chinese themselves snigger about the ?three without peasants??peasants with no land, no job and no minimum guarantee (land being the minimum guarantee in rural China).

In urban areas, more and more people feel the angst of bearing heavy mortgage loans. Urbanites have rioted

in property developers offices. Some of them bought places that were expensive as recently as last year. Today, the same properties are going cheap.

As China?s property party slows down, who is going to end up holding the baby? The lines are blurred in China where the state, banks, local governments and real estate are one and same, where China?s aam aadmi will be at the receiving end.

The author is a Singapore-based sinologist, currently a visiting fellow at the Institute of Chinese Studies, Delhi. Views are personal