Thread: China Tea Party: Billionaires protest property-tax plan

Mar 16, 2010

China Tea Party: Billionaires protest property-tax plan

04:53 PM

In what Bloomberg calls "a nascent Chinese Tea-Party movement," China's richest man and other influential communist billionaires are protesting a proposed tax on property.

"A property tax isn't appropriate," Zong Qinghou, chairman of the Hangzhou Wahaha Group beverage company and China's richest man, said in an interview. "Now everyone already pays monthly management fees, so it would just add another burden."

With a combined wealth of $12.4 billion, Zong and the country's 16th and 19th wealthiest men argue that a property tax would hurt homeowners and investors/speculators. China is now the world's biggest property-investment market.

Bloomberg explains:

An annual levy on property would give local officials a reliable stream of revenue, making them less dependent on land auctions that have fueled speculation and helped prices rise 10.7 percent in February from a year ago, the fastest pace in almost two years. ...

"The ones who have properties are the ones with the power to implement the tax," Pan Shiyi, 46, chairman of Beijing-based real-estate developer Soho China Ltd., told reporters in Hong Kong March 11. "So it's very unlikely" the tax will become law. He and his wife rank 24th on Forbes' list.

The executives represent one side of a widening rift within the Communist Party, said Li Cheng, director of research at the Brookings Institution's John L. Thornton China Center in Washington. It will grow as the country continues to develop, pitting them and businesses in coastal regions against those who want to redistribute more of China's growing income and develop interior provinces.

"This is what I call one party, two factions," Li Cheng said.

http://content.usatoday.com/communities ... erty-tax/1

How big a demonstration can you have if only billionaires show up?