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Hot Properties Chongqing April 2012

In our view, a city’s level of internationalization depends not only on how many people from overseas settle there as well. An increasing number of foreigners have already or plan to choose Chongqing as a place to live in the long-term. One impressive person, who is in his mid-twenties, told us that he hopes to stay in Chongqing for at least another 40 years. It is delightful to hear of more and more foreigners settling down in Chongqing, buying a property, or marrying a local, all of which prove Chongqing is developing a foreigner-friendly environment.

2012 will see more developments in Chongqing’s internationalization.

From those early days, enrollments at YCIS Chongqing progressed to the point that in January 2008, the school moved to their current site in Yuan Yang.

On the 21^st of April 2012, YCIS Chongqing will celebrate its 10^th Anniversary. As our enrolments continue to surge, this is a time to remember and celebrate. The school plans to host a fantastic celebration that will be called the “YCIS Spring Fair.”

Down below follows a PDF with Sponsorship information and more.

YCIS 10th Anniversary Sponsorship EN

The future free trade zone will highlight railway’s role in transportation and logistics as Liangjiang is on its way to become a regional railway hub.

“Although fully-fledged railway systems are great attraction for Asian and European countries to invest in Chongqing, doing business will be difficult for investors without setting up a free trade zone,” said Professor Pu Yongjian of Chongqing University.

Source: China Daily

Chongqing and Shanghai are the first two cities in China to implement the trial tax.

“Fewer people have come to our sales office since the second half of last year, and everyone has asked if the houses we sell will be taxed or not,” said a property consultant, surnamed Lin,whose office is located in Chongqing’s Longtousi Park around which high-end apartment blocks are clustered.

“The gloomy housing market is getting even worse, and we cannot sell 10 houses a month. If the situation deteriorates further, I’m afraid that my colleagues and I will lose our jobs,” said Lin.

According to research conducted by Chongqing Municipal Land Resources and Housing Administrative Bureau, the number of people who visited sales offices in high-end housing areas has recently dropped 30 percent to 50 percent, and considerable number of homebuyers changed their minds to buy smaller-sized or more modestly-styled homes.

Statistics show that from January 28 to November 30, the sale of high-end housing in Chongqing plunged to 700,000 square meters, 4.1 percent lower than that of 2010.

“The implementation of the tax restricted the development of the high-level housing market, and then curbed the prices of this kind of housing,” said Wen Xing, an official of Chongqing Municipal Land Resources and Housing Administrative Bureau.

The property tax also rationalized the structure of the commercial housing, cutting the rate of large-sized houses and increasing mid- and small-sized houses supplies, thus more ordinary people can now afford a home, Wen said.

Chongqing began to tax all villas as well as new apartments priced at least two times the average price of all newly-built homes last year.

The annual tax rates are 0.5 percent of the transaction prices for villas and apartments priced less than three times the average price, 1 percent for those priced three to four times the average and 1.2 percent for those priced more than four times the average.

For a family, the first 180 square meters for villas and first 100 square meters for high-end apartments are exempted from tax, according to the regulation.

For non-permanent residents who don’t work or run companies in Chongqing, their second homes will be taxed at 0.5 percent regardless of the prices.

A taxpayer surnamed Luo has a villa in Jiulongpo district, covering 250 square meters. Luo said he must pay 2,000 Yuan ($315) in tax for the excessive 70 square meters of his villa each year.

“I hope the housing tax won’t be too high, as my family won’t be able to bear the burden,” said Luo.

The owners of 8,563 high-end houses paid more than 90 million Yuan ($14.2 million) in taxes10 months after the implementation of the trial tax, said He Zhiming, vice president of Chongqing Finance Bureau.

All the property tax revenue will be used for the construction and maintenance of public rental housing in Chongqing, He said.

The levy is designed to help regulate income distribution and promote social equality, and guide reasonable housing consumption for land saving and intensive use, according to a statement issued by the Ministry of Finance, the State Administration of Taxation and the Ministry of Housing and Urban-Rural Development.

Chongqing government built 110,000 units of public rental houses in 2011, accommodating more than 300,000 urban low-income earners, including migrant workers and graduates who had failed to find a job.

Regulations stipulate that a tenant can buy his rented apartment after five years of renting at the price based on the apartment’s construction cost — much lower than the prices of commercial housing.

Source: China Daily

Container transport will be authorized for the Yunkunmianyue international railway, which begins in Chongqing and runs through the provinces of Guizhou and Yunnan and the countries of Myanmar and Vietnam before ending at the Indian Ocean, according to Ma Zhongyuan, head of Chongqing’s customs office.

Ma said the railway’s container shipments will facilitate exports from Chongqing and west China to ASEAN member countries.

Another railway linking Chongqing with the city of Duisburg in Germany will be extended to the port city of Antwerp in Belgium, shortening the time it takes to ship goods from Chongqing to Belgium to about 16 days, 20 days less than the time on sea route, according to Ma.

China and Belgium also agreed to simplify custom inspection procedures, allowing goods exported from Belgium to China to go through just a single inspection in Belgium, Ma said.

The Chongqing municipal government has constructed multiple foreign trade ports and channels in recent years. The growth of the region’s foreign trade value, foreign investment and overseas investment rank first among the country’s provinces, autonomous regions and municipalities.

Source: China Daily

In Winter 2007, YCIS Chongqing has moved to our state-of-the-art new campus situated at Chongqing International School Garden which is a new area in the city’s Northern New Economic Development Zone. It is strategically located between the airport and the city centre near the city’s main road–Jinyu Road, just off the airport expressway with easy access.

Besides regular classrooms, the new campus has specialty rooms for art, music, dance, and information and communication technology. There is ample green space that has been beautifully created to allow for special courts for basketball, volleyball, badminton and table tennis. There will also be a large indoor sports hall.

YCIS Chongqing offers a unique education philosophy that integrates the best elements of both Eastern and Western cultures. This educational approach ensures that students will enter the 21st century as “world citizens”, fluent in at least two major world languages (English and Chinese) and be highly skilled in information technology. The teachers strive to provide the students with excellent academic training, critical thinking skills and respect for all cultures. Furthermore, students are educated from a global perspective and with moral and spiritual values affirming the worth and dignity of each individual. YCIS Chongqing currently offers programmes from K3 to Y13 (aged three to 18 years old).

Contact:
Address: No. 2, Huxia Street, Yuan Yang Town, New Northern Zone, Chongqing 401122, P.R.C.
Tel:(8623) 6763 8482 Fax:(8623) 6763 8483

Website: http://www.ycis-cq.com/
Email: enquiry@ycef.com

First of all, making sure you are single and older than 22 if you are male or 20 if you are female, before you decide to get married in China. And you are not supposed to be the close relative of your soon to be bride or groom.

Getting married in China can be easy, if you really think it’s time to do so: appearing together for registration at the relevant authority (usually, the civil affair department) with the required certificates and documents. You should present a certification certifying that you do not have a spouse at the time of marriage, which shall be issued by a notary institution or competent governmental authority in the state of your origin and be authenticated by the Chinese embassy or consulate in that state.

From the date of your marriage, you are “half Chinese”, as some people usually say. You enjoy rights hereafter, and you hold responsibility at the same time. Briefly, they are as following:

Right of Equality: Husband and wife have equal status in the family. Both husband and wife have the right to use his or her own surname and given name, and have the freedom to engage in production and other work, to study and to participate in social activities. And either husband or wife has the power to dispose of the community property for their daily needs of life without having to obtain the consent of the other, but on the other hand, the couple shall have to, through consultation, reach an agreement on significant disposition of the community property for non-daily needs of life.

Duty of loyalty: One spouse owes a duty of loyalty to the other. A serious breach of this duty, for instance bigamy and cohabitation with any third party, will entitle the other to claim damages upon divorce. Damages are generally granted by courts to compensate the emotional distress and material losses suffered by the non-breaching spouse.

Duty to Support: Husband and wife have the duty to maintain each other. If one party fails to perform this duty, the party in need of maintenance shall have the right to demand maintenance payments from the other party.

Right of Succession: Upon decease of one spouse, the surviving spouse has the right to inherit the properties of the decedent spouse at the time of death.

In China, one of the most important principle about marriage is that all the assets gained before marriage are individual property, and all the income gained after marriage are community property if there is no marital property agreement stipulates otherwise. Therefore, a couple may enter into an agreement in writing providing that properties acquired during or prior to marriage are separately owned by each, or concurrently owned by both, in each case, in part or in whole. In absence of such agreement, properties shall be owned by spouses according to statutory rules.

May you always have everything you wish for a rich life together!

Recent graduates in industries from engineering to finance in both Europe and the U.S. are making their way to the country, hoping to land their first jobs faster and more easily than their competitors.

Lesmes Gutiérrez, a 23-year-old engineering graduate of Loughborough University in the U.K., who had a two-week placement with Baoshang Bank in Beijing late last year, says potential employers are more impressed with those who can demonstrate a willingness to move out of their comfort zone. “It’s quite a big step to go somewhere not knowing what to expect. The idea of going to China calls for awareness and the willingness to relocate,” which could be appealing to employers, he says.

And he’s not the only one to have spotted the competitive advantage work experience in China may bring. Applications for internships there have more than tripled over the past couple of years, according to figures released by CRCC Asia, a London-based recruitment consultancy.

In 2009, the company received about 250 applications, compared with more than 1,000 so far this year, says CRCC Asia Director Daniel Nivern. “The Chinese economy is booming and it’s very appealing for graduates to get an insight as to why that’s happening by visiting [the country]. With the job market depressed in the U.K. and the U.S., China offers a great opportunity to get a long-term career,” he says.

He says China has also come into focus for Western companies looking to grow. “A lot of businesses realize that if they want to be part of the global economy, they need to be going into China,” adds Mr. Nivern, whose company has mostly placed recent graduates from the U.K. and the U.S., but also from other European countries like Spain, in finance, marketing and legal firms in China.

“I have been told repeatedly that my work in China looks great on my résumé,” says Alexander Lesher, who recently finished a master’s degree in Environmental Engineering at the Indiana-based Purdue University and subsequently undertook a two-month internship at environmental company Nanjing Zhuangxun Tech Co. in Beijing.

He says his experience there gave him a greater awareness of cultural differences. He says he was surprised by the way business people interacted during lunches. During a working meal with a group of about eight people, a single person would buy enough food to completely fill the table and would go out of his or her way to make sure everyone ate as much as possible. “Then they would act humbly, as if they have done nothing,” he says. “That wouldn’t happen in the U.S.”

Others visiting China for the first time found the first few days disconcerting. Sophie Corcut, a former unpaid marketing intern at fair-trade company Shangrila Farms, says: “Living in Beijing and dealing with a totally foreign language was challenging. Things like crossing the road or buying things in the supermarket or counting the numbers were suddenly difficult.” But it was precisely that challenge that Ms. Corcut, who borrowed from her parents to fund her trip, was looking for. “It was brilliant. I was looking for that stimulation.”

Ms. Corcut, who now has a full-time job with management consultancy Accenture in London, says her two months’ work experience in China was more rewarding than previous internships she had done in her native England. “I have done a lot of work experience in the U.K., and they actually don’t need you. You are just there, and they are constantly trying to find you work. You are given something very menial,” she says. “But in China they were actually using me. I was lucky to be interning for a young company that needed a lot of help.”

She says initially after graduation she wasn’t sure what to do professionally with a degree in history and French, but in China she learned how to use Adobe Illustrator and Photoshop and started designing promotional leaflets for the company. “I tried to get a big sales push and tried to get new clients,” she says.

But some recruiters are swift to point out that China isn’t the only place that will help students stand out. Chris McCarthy, of London-based recruiter Hays PLC, says it isn’t China experience per se that employers are looking for but evidence that potential employees are willing to challenge themselves.

“If Europe and the U.S. are going to maintain their place in global business people need to be prepared to put on a back pack” and head for less familiar places, says Mr. McCarthy. “It is evidence that people are willing to challenge themselves, not specifically China, that employers are looking for. They want to see a bit of ambition and entrepreneurship,” he says.

He adds, however, that China can be of particular relevance to employers looking for people with experience in emerging markets.

But while experience in China may be invaluable, some obstacles can seem formidable. Mr. Gutiérrez, working at a microlender, struggled with Chinese. “The problem with a rural bank is that Chinese is its first language and English is not used at all. When it came to producing reports on the fluctuation of gold prices, there were no previous templates I could use so I had to rely on an intuitive process and then improve the subsequent reports based on feedback.”

Despite some barriers, the benefits run in both directions, and companies in China are profiting from the surge in interest from potential interns in the West. Thomas Cao, chief executive of Beijing-based Broad Global Venture Capital Co., says he finds real value in the work done by interns.

“We look for graduates to come and do real work. We have asked our interns, for example, to help us analyze the chances of companies going public on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange,” he says.

Ultimately, says Mr. Lesher, going to China was about turning a personal fascination into a tangible benefit for his career. “The country was just a point of personal fascination. I wasn’t sure how it would work out.”

Source: http://online.wsj.com/