Xi Jinping’s to-do list has seen a lot of ticks in recent months: more flights into Taiwan’s defence zone; suppressing dissenting voices in Hong Kong; clipping the wings of tech barons; outlawing the out-of-school tutoring industry. The list goes on.
However, one key initiative – introducing a local property tax – has attracted fewer headlines but is apparently so controversial within China’s ruling Communist party that even Xi is still only able to deal in trial schemes rather than wholesale change.
The tax is seen as vital to reforming the country’s bloated property sector, a concrete-and-glass divide between China’s haves and have-nots which has been personified by the woes of the heavily indebted developer China Evergrande.
The property
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