Chinese inflation worries go viral

[Rock]

http://www.theburningplatform.com/?p=8828

Below is an excerpt from this article which appeared in the December 24, 2010 edition of the FT. It implies an average session with an average Chinese prostitute is just RMB 300 or US$45 while a break-in nets a paltry RMB1,200 or US$180. Sounds like crime doesn't pay much and P4P is still affordable. And I sure as hell would hate to be a Chinese peasant.

The e-mail, which has gone viral in various versions, provides unscientific but entertaining estimates of how long citizens would need to work to afford a 100-square-metre apartment in central Beijing, which currently sells for about Rmb3m ($450,000).

As long as there were no natural disasters, a peasant farmer working an average plot of land would just have been able to afford an apartment if he or she somehow had worked since the Tang dynasty, which ended in 907AD, until today.

If a Chinese blue-collar worker had been on the average monthly salary of Rmb1,500 since the opium wars in the mid-19th century and had given up weekends, then he or she might just have been able to afford a place of his or her own.

Prostitutes, the e-mail says, would have to entertain 10,000 customers – a marathon feat requiring them to service one customer a night from the age of 18 until the age of 46 without an evening off.

The thief would need to conduct 2,500 robberies to find the funds to buy a home.

Of course, the e-mail notes, such calculations do not count interior decoration, furniture or household electronics.