Still a long road to property transparency

[By Jiao Haiyang/China.org.cn]

With the frequent exposal of government officials who own many properties, building a national housing information network has gained the public's attention again. The housing information system actually is a major information technology project outlined in China's 12th Five-Year Plan (2011-2015).

In accordance with the requirements of the State Council, the individual housing information system covering 40 major cities should have been made public by the end of June 30, 2012. However, to date the Ministry of Housing and Urban-Rural Development has still not made the information public.

Why? There are probably three reasons: The first lies in the technology aspect. The second is the government's worry about disclosing certain truths about the real estate market. Last but not least, some officials are afraid that their multiple properties would be made public. Technology, obviously, is not where the shoe pinches.

Property openness in China may be a distant dream, as the development of the national housing information network is thwarted by officials. As a result, certain truths like that of the whereabouts of social wealth and the wealth gap, may never be made known to the public. Covering up such information doesn't mean that the citizens are ignorant of the whereabouts of the wealth. They can learn more about this through recalculation and analysis.

The 2010 report of the World Bank revealed that 0.4 percent of the Chinese population owns 70 percent of the nation's wealth. However, in the United States, five percent of its people hold 60 percent of the wealth. In other words, 1.31 million Chinese officials above county level and their families own 80 percent of the national wealth. Globally, China's wealth concentration ranks first, with the most serious polarization of any country worldwide. Specifically, the wealth gap in China is 100 times wider than the world average.

Of course, these statistics are not enough to show the severity of the gap. It's the exposal of the estate overlords that helps the public better understand who grabs the wealth they create. Gong Aiai, later nicknamed "house sister," was recently found to possess 41 properties in Beijing, covering a total floor area of 9,600 square meters. Householders like Gong Aiai may be too numerous to count in China. How much money they have and how they get that money remains unknown.

Whether the information is disclosed or not, the public actually know through professional analysis that real estate holdings are an important way for the rich and powerful to grab money. Profiteering through land development, property reselling and making use of bank loans are nothing new nowadays. There are also other ways to collect wealth: manipulating national resources, controlling the security market, seizing rebates from the foreign capital introduction, and occupying large project contracts. Behind these means are corruption and social injustice, which officials spare no effort to gloss over. This is why the release of the national housing information network has been continuously deferred.

Historically, it's always violence that helps to solve the social injustice and bridge the wealth gap. However, this can do more harm than good because it hurts everyone involved. Violence never helps to effectively promote the development of civilization and the accumulation of social wealth.

Besides, it's obvious that concealing the illness and avoiding treatment doesn't work. The only effective means to solve social disparity are openness and supervision. If the national individual housing information network can be established and searchable and property ownership transparency realized as soon as possible, the masses can effectively supervise the officials. This system may eventually help the hardworking public earn more money to afford a house or a flat.

Only in these ways can the government alleviate the social contradictions and conflicts and win public trust.

The author is deputy editor-in-chief of Encyclopedic Knowledge magazine.

Opinion articles reflect the views of their authors, not necessarily those of China.org.cn.