Honestly I had all kind of friends when I was in Zhuhai, never look down upon them. Some of them came in useful.
I had 1 phone number from one of them, anytime if I get into any problem in the city, within 15-20 mins， he would be down.
I also had the chief of the 110 telephone number too, but the other phone number is more useful lol .
Don't have to pay any additional money if they come and help me settle, just treat them to cheap beer and 烧烤。-roadside stall.
I have even someone who is basically working for those syndicate that works in the Macau Casino.
Those rich kids from those Coal Mine owners that gambled away on credit and cant pay on the spot, many a time my friend will bring them over to 1 of those hotel in Zhuhai near the border and check them into a room, they feed him but don't allow him to sleep until their parents pay up.
initially I was weary of them, but as I got to know them better, as long as you let them know where your "lines" are they respect you and would never encourage you to do stuff that is against your wishes.
Regarding the property situation, I think Xi made a big mistake with his , "apartment is used for staying and not for speculation" and till to this date they are trying hard to rectify the error.
An Apartment in any family should be an asset of wealth , whether in China or SG. He was trying to be popular with the masses , trying to project the message that he was going to make it affordable to vast majority of the masses. He didn't understand how much the economy is dependent on this sector.
The economy is always better when the real estate market is hot, what they needed was to have better control on the credit for the developers and also the buyers ( to get rid of thos speculators who basically did not have the necessary cash)v , instead they came with freezing of sales for long period of time etc
In the past, many rich Chinese had invested in multiple properties to collect rent and by his action many wealthy individuals started to shift the money to overseas property . which finally also impacted the RMB, and many other sector of the economy including banking.
To this date, the effect is still being felt, ie borrower who took at loan and bought property at peak, now have to "top up" the value of current property vs their outstanding loan and if they are unable to, the bank "force sell them in the auction market, and thus depressing the market further and cause families to be in a difficult financial situation.
In my opinion that is his big mistake, he should have learned from LKY , that citizen needs to "sunk their roots" in SG, with the high ownership of property thru HDB , means the future of the country is tie in with the citizen.
From last year, they started talking about the "SG property model", ie HDB and private property, after they basically destroyed the private property market with their "controls" , now they indicated they no longer will "control the private properties but they will have something similar to HDB where it is made affordable to the masses but they didn't realized that in SG, HDB is also appreciating like crazy. Maybe it is a face saving method for them ?
Basically even the genuine buyers are waiting, as long as he doesn't remove that phrase, it is going to be slow slow recovery. He needs new money coming in to "trigger" some urgency is these people sitting on the side.
Hopefully, after his plan to open up and encourage tourism ( in the past they always think their domestic tourism is enough) , he would think about having scheme, like allowing foreigners to buy property and with it comes with a 10 years resident visa , that will create new inflow and maybe antic those Chinese buyers on the sideline to move or miss the boat.
Of course it needed to be paid in cash, no loan from the Chinese Banking system to further diversify the property risk
.-Basically Foreign inflows, this will also ensure that they are attracting those high NetWorth that is long term and not speculative in nature.
In fact many places in China are ideal for people who works online.
Don't know much about Hainan island stuff .
Finally I think Zhuhai should be one of the top few cities for retirement, (but not for business), you can get out fast by land, by air or by sea if there any bad "development" . ( of course I don't see any as the Chinese are not interested in politics they are more interested in making money ).
Just adding this additional history/ info about Zhuhai
Although Zhuhai had the same Special Economic Zone as Shenzhen but lack in the development due to her previous leaders that only allowing environmental friendly industries to be operated out of Zhuhai. So lots of those factories was located in Zhongshan and her smaller town and cities beside Zhuhai like Tanzhou.
That is why Zhuhai has better air quality compared to other parts of China. ( many Chinese Politburo members had their vacation here).
