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China is trying to keep Shanghai's soaring property market under control

This segment originally aired Dec. 8, 2016, on VICE News Tonight on HBO.

“As China’s middle class becomes bigger and bigger, the housing prices have started to go up,” Joe Zhou of Jones Lang La Salle told VICE News correspondent Isobel Yeung.

Shanghai’s property market is super hot, with surging demand for new apartments and prices in September hitting an all-time high, as the new middle class becomes the urban elite. Those who can afford to are even snapping up their second or third property as status symbols.

People born into Mao’s China in the 1950s and ’60s are now enjoying an economic emancipation since the country opened itself up to foreign investment in the ’90s, creating a new consumer class. But income disparity in China is increasing and over the next decade, a projected 400 million will move to China’s cities.

The Chinese government, fearing a widening inequality gap between the cities and the countryside, is struggling to control the bubble.

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