The Next Big Investment

Psst! Wondering where to park your money since depressed stock prices are bringing you down and don't have enough money to shell out for a flat?

Then what about the next best thing and parking your money in a parking space in Hong Kong?

The benefits? There is currently a rental yield of 3 to 5 percent, and even better, no stamp duty when it's time to sell.

Also you don't have to worry about fung shui or where the space is located... it's just a parking spot really. There's no need for maintenance either. Sounds like a good deal, no?

Many people had the same idea too.

Earlier this week Chinachem released a number of parking spaces in Hong Kong Garden, Bella Vista, Golden Lion Garden, Belair Gardens and Shatin 33.

Six hundred spaces were sold on Monday and Tuesday, and at least another 120 on Thursday.

"People queued up at the sales office in Tsuen Wan's Nina Tower when sales began at 9am," said Andy Leung, senior sales manager at Midland Realty.

Seeing interest in parking lots, Chinachem raised prices by HK$30,000 on Thursday.

The price of an average parking space in Hong Kong Garden is about HK$320,000 and it can be rented out for HK$1,500 a month, yielding more than 5 percent.

"If you spend HK$2.5 million to buy a flat at a housing estate and rent it out for HK$9,000 a month, your net rental yield is just about 4 percent," Leung said.

"Most people buying parking spaces are investors. They are seeking a new avenue of investment to hedge against inflation," said Tony Lai, a manager at Centaline Property Agency.

"With a raft of new restrictions on residential property, parking spaces have suddenly become a popular investment," he said.

Not only Chinachem, but also New World Development and Sino Land have started selling parking spaces since the new stamp duties on buyers who are not permanent residents was implemented.

Cheung Kong will start selling spots in Tai Wai's Festival City later this month, while Wheelock Properties will be selling lots in Tai Wai's Parc Royale, Bellagio in Sham Tseng and Palm Cove in Tuen Mun.

However, Wong Leung-sing, an associate director of research at Centaline warned there were risks to buying parking spaces as investment.

"if the economy tanks, the first thing people will do is sell their cars," he said.

He believes that could lead to a 50 percent increase in parking spaces available.

Is the car market that volatile?

There's always a shortage of places for people to park their cars, no?

China's Daunting Challenges Ahead

President Hu Jintao delivering his speech to delegates

The 18th National People's Congress opened today with much fanfare and all eyes were on the stage as President Hu Jintao came out and following right behind him an older but still mobile former President Jiang Zemin. It was an obvious show that Jiang is still very much a power broker behind the scenes.

How they seat some 2,300 delegates in the Great Hall of the People is a pretty amazing feat, but probably even more so is how to stay awake throughout the entire proceedings. What happens if you get caught on camera dozing off? Or need to go to the loo while the President is speaking -- for 100 minutes?

In any event everyone was riveted to hear what Hu had to say in his swansong speech.

And apart from going over how the country had developed in the past decade, his constant refrain was how the country needed to battle corruption. "If we fail to handle this issue well, it could prove fatal to the Party, and even cause the collapse of the Party and the fall of the state," he said.

Anyone who breaks the law will be brought to justice "whoever they are and whatever power or official positions they have," he said.

However what Hu is saying is a repeat of 10 years ago -- which indicates nothing has really changed.

Officials who were charged with corruption were punished depending on the severity of it and how good their guanxi was. This unwritten policy continues to this day. Worse is those who had serious problems during their watch were sacked, but in reality lay low for a few years before being reappointed to another position elsewhere.

And while this is one of the biggest issues ordinary Chinese are most concerned about, nothing concrete has been done.

They are tired of seeing people in power taking advantage of their positions for financial gain. But this stems from not only the Cultural Revolution but the Great Leap Forward too, where social morals completely broke down for utter survival.

It's all good and well that Hu is openly warning officials about corruption, but what is the Party going to do about it?

Hu warned corruption could be "fatal to the Party"

Where are the proper checks and balances? The rule of law is used by the Party for its own ends instead of letting justice take its course.

The handling of Bo Xilai and the other players, his wife Gu Kailai and former police chief Wang Lijun is case in point.

All three did not had access to their own lawyers -- and in the case of Gu and Li, they were detained and unseen until their cases came to trial.

We have yet to see Bo emerge from some kind of house arrest, and even then is that how rule of law works in China?

There are other pressing concerns the general public have, including a social safety net, healthcare costs and having safe food to eat.

How about addressing these everyday problems?

When you look back at the Hu-Wen era, what did they really achieve?

They will like to boast that China hosted its first Olympic Games and the country sustained 30 years of economic growth, but those double-digit numbers have dropped considerably towards the end of their term and they did little to avert the problem except throw tons of money into stimulus packages that ended up on Macau casino tables.

Serious economic reforms must be made, particularly in state-owned enterprises and bank lending. There needs to be more support for small- and medium-sized enterprises that are itching to expand but don't have access to capital.

And there also needs to be greater innovation because China cannot continue being the factory of the world much longer. It has too many educated young people who are capable of doing something other than mind-numbing assembly-line work.

The government needs to stop being so paranoid and tightening its monitoring of the media, particularly the internet. Media freedoms became even more strict in the past five years than in the Jiang Zemin era. Why is that? Shouldn't things move forward and not backward?

So like US President Barack Obama, incoming President Xi Jinping and Premier Li Keqiang have daunting challenges ahead.

We hope Xi and Li can find consensus within the Party to move China forward -- to make these long overdue reforms, create an accountability system and encourage innovation.

Otherwise China is going to be so mired in its own problems that its citizens will lose its faith in the Party -- something that's already happening.

Four More Years

The Presidential hug on winning the hard-fought election

We are relieved to find Barack Obama has secured a second term as the President of the United States of America.

The media had been calling it a neck-and-neck race which had many of us worried -- as it was down to the swing states.

But in the end Obama managed to secure most of the swing states, in particular Ohio to so far get 303 electoral votes versus challenge Mitt Romney's 206.

Four years ago he won a landslide 365 electoral votes over Republican John McCain's 173.

So it was much of a relief to Democrats to see Obama still in the White House.

Today reminded me of November 2008, watching the elections in Beijing.

I wrote about it on my blog here and still distinctly remember walking into the state-run canteen in the office I worked at and seeing a usually jaded American colleague grinning from ear to ear. "America is great again!" he exclaimed.

While Obama first campaigned on "change", his victory speech promised "The best is yet to come".

On the eve of the 18th National People's Congress, no doubt China's leaders are pleased to be dealing with someone they already know, but are hoping the anti-China rhetoric will stop.

And as Obama has already met soon to be President Xi Jinping, we hope this will bode well for Sino-US relations.

The two countries need each other more than ever before, and hopefully they set aside differences and work towards an economic solution to solve each others' fiscal situations, and bring an end to the horrific conflict in Syria.

Obama's unfailing optimism is infectious. He definitely feeds on people's enthusiasm and he gives it back to them in terms of hope.

May he continue to bring us more hope for "change".

Picture of the Day: Changing of the LV Guard

Kusama's "nerve" sculptures dismantled from the shop window

Tonight I walked past the Louis Vuitton store in Central and was surprised to see eccentric Japanese artist Yayoi Kusama's signature red and white polka-dotted "nerve" sculptures discarded unceremoniously on the sidewalk.

I thought the workmen were carefully packing these commercial works of art that were previously in the display windows and ship them back to wherever they came from.

Instead on closer inspection I saw many of them were damaged, along with the flower sculptures which was kind of shocking really.

So every LV store around the world (apparently 461 of them) is going to dispose of each and every Kusama sculpture in put them in the dumpster?

Just shows how disposable fashion is!