Anhui Huainan, once famous for its coal, electricity and chemical industry and considered as a "big city" in the 1970s-1980s, has now seen a large number of "10000 yuan houses" such as Hegang, Heilongjiang.
Shanghai's 6-hour-a-day power resources used to come from Huainan. Up to now, Huainan is still rich in coal reserves, which can't be dug up for hundreds of years. But why is the economic growth here slowing down and the population loss so serious that house prices are as low as Hegang with exhausted resources?
the cheapest house price in Anhui
Huainan, Anhui, which is located at the edge of the Yangtze River Delta urban agglomeration, has developed railway transportation and four distinct seasons. It is close to Hefei, the capital of Anhui Province. Huainan people can reach the center of Hefei in half an hour by high-speed railway and Nanjing, the capital of Jiangsu Province in one and a half hours. How much is the lowest price of a house in such a prefecture level city per square meter? The answer is less than 600 yuan! In Huainan, buying a house for forty or fifty thousand yuan is by no means a gimmick.
On the shell housing platform, there are more than 50 houses with a total price of "10000-100000" in Huainan, and hundreds of houses with a total price of more than 100000. The cheapest house costs only 45000 yuan, with a construction area of 54 square meters and a unit price of 834 yuan / square meter.
On the anjuke platform, there are more than 110 houses with a total price of less than 100000 in Huainan, Anhui Province, with a minimum unit price of only 572 yuan / m2, a total price of 36000 yuan and a construction area of 63 square meters. There is also a set of one bedroom and one living room with a total price of only 30000 yuan, with a construction area of 48 square meters and a unit price of 625 yuan / square meter.
"Most of the houses are real. This price is not uncommon. Houses below 100000 are mainly distributed in Xiejiaji, Bagongshan and Panji districts." Zhang Quan, who is engaged in local intermediary brokerage, told China first finance and economics.
The reporter noted that the vast majority of "10000 yuan houses" are concentrated in the old residential communities in the three districts mentioned above, such as Kongji North Village, upstream community, Baiyun New Village, Lantian community, etc.
Take Kongji North Village as an example. At present, there are 8 sets of low-cost houses on sale in shell housing, most of which were listed in the second half of last year. The area where the community is located is more than 20 kilometers away from the center of Huainan City, adjacent to provincial highway 102, maoshandong scenic spot, Bagongshan scenic spot and Huainan No. 17 middle school. However, the houses are old, mostly 20 or 30 years old, and the decoration of low-cost houses is also very bad, so these houses are basically in a state of no one's interest.
"Because there are mines in Huainan, many employee communities were built in the mine decades ago. The cost is relatively low and the building age is old, so now this kind of low price is actually normal. It has always been very low, and it has been falling in the past three years, but this is not the mainstream house price in Huainan. The price of most houses in the urban area is 4000-8000 yuan / square meter." Intermediary broker Zhang Quan said.
According to China real estate market network, the average house price in Huainan City, Anhui Province by the end of 2021 was 6114 yuan / m2, which seems to be the normal house price level of a fourth tier city in Central China.
However, the average price of Huainan ranked last among the 16 prefecture level cities in Anhui, and fell significantly behind Bozhou (6753 yuan / m2), the second place. The average price of Hefei, the provincial capital, has reached 22869 yuan / m2. Although it only takes half an hour to take the high-speed railway from Huainan to Hefei, the house price in Hefei is more than three times that in Huainan.
At present, the price of new buildings on sale in Huainan is between 5000-9000 yuan / m2, and the total price of new houses in the city center is basically 600000-1 million. The most expensive second-hand house is a villa community in Shouxian County, with a listing unit price of 19000 yuan / m2 and a total price of more than 3 million yuan.
the mining area was once very rich
Extremely similar to the fate of Hegang, the rise and fall of Huainan is also closely related to coal.
Hegang was once a brilliant energy industrial city in the northeast border of China. As early as 1918, a coal mining company began to mine coal. In 1926, the railway was completed and opened to traffic, and personnel exchanges gathered, gradually forming a prosperous city. Today, energy exhausted Hegang has attracted attention because of the house "cabbage price", and its economic development has been eclipsed.
Huainan's coal resource mining history is even longer than Hegang. As early as the Ming and Qing Dynasties, there were folk kilns and official kilns in Shangyao mountain and Shungeng mountain in Huainan to develop surface outcrop coal.
By the end of the Qing Dynasty, Huainan also had large-scale coal mining companies, with an annual output of 1.21 million tons of coal before liberation. After 1950, Huainan coal mine became one of the five major coal mines in China at that time; In 1984, Huainan, Qingdao, Wuxi, Tangshan and other cities became the first batch of "larger cities" approved by the State Council, with local legislative power.
"There are quite a lot of 'post-80s' parents in Huainan who are employees in the mine. At that time, the salary in the mine was three or four times that of other units. The 1980s was a real golden age for us." Huainan local people, "post-80s" Xie Ming told reporters.
However, in the past ten years, the development of Huainan has obviously entered the slow lane, and the population has lost a lot. In 2014, Huainan became the only city with negative GDP growth among the 16 prefecture level cities in Anhui, and has lost the glory of the period of rapid development since then. In 2021, Huainan's GDP ranked 12th and fifth from bottom in Anhui.
According to the data of the seventh census released in 2021, the permanent resident population of Huainan is 3.03 million, a decrease of 9% compared with the population of "Liupu" ten years ago.
Why does Huainan's economic growth slow down and population loss? Unlike Hegang in Heilongjiang or Tongling in Anhui Province, which are resource exhausted cities, Huainan still has abundant coal reserves. According to the overall plan of mineral resources in Huainan City (2016-2020), Huainan has identified 13.8 billion tons of coal resources. According to the current annual output, Huainan's coal can be mined for another 240 years. According to the calculation of long-term reserves, Huainan mining area still has up to 44.4 billion tons of reserves, accounting for 50% of the total reserves in East China.
However, in the context of energy conservation, emission reduction and capacity reduction, many state-owned coal enterprises in Huainan have closed down one after another. Huainan, once economically dependent on the coal power industry, has entered a painful process of economic transformation.
"Why can you buy a house in the mining area for 30000 or 40000 yuan? Because many people have left the mining area and don't let their children develop here. In the past, many people in Huainan worked in coal mines for three generations, but now all who can go have gone. Hefei is also the first choice to buy a house, or those who have more ability to go outside the province." Xie Ming said.
In 2012, Huainan's coal production capacity exceeded 90 million tons, and by 2015, it will become 80 million tons, leaving only 57 million tons by 2020. From this, we can see the rhythm and intensity of Huainan's capacity reduction.
aim at emerging industries in the future
Hegang, Heilongjiang, Yumen, Gansu and other cities are typical resource exhausted cities. They thrive on coal, oil and other resources. Once the resources are exhausted and the pillar industries of the economy are lost, the population will be lost in large numbers. Hegang was born with the lowest house price in the country, while Yumen in Gansu Province has simply become a deserted empty city.
However, in a city with abundant resources and livable natural environment like Huainan, where will the economy go?
Now, Hefei, the capital of Anhui Province, is vigorously developing emerging industries. In nearly 20 years, GDP growth has run out of the speed of the dark horse.
Huainan, not far from Hefei, is trying to learn from Hefei.
Xiejiaji District, Bagongshan district and Panji district with the lowest house prices are geographically located in the north of Huainan, where traditional mining areas are being abandoned. Tianjiaan district is the old economic center of Huainan, but the old urban area does not meet the requirements of the new era. Now Huainan is stepping up the southward migration of the city, narrowing the geographical distance from Hefei, and creating a "Shannan New Area". The "integration of Huainan and Huainan into the same city" is the main work promoted by Huainan in recent years.
In terms of economic transformation, Huainan is also learning from Hefei, focusing on building strategic emerging industries. In the implementation plan on implementing the opinions of the provincial Party committee and the provincial government on vigorously developing the top ten emerging industries and building a gathering place of emerging industries with important influence issued by the Huainan Municipal Party committee and the municipal government, it is proposed that the industrial development priorities of Huainan include: new generation information technology, new materials, new energy vehicles and parts, high-end equipment manufacturing, life and health At the same time, focus on artificial intelligence, new energy, energy conservation and environmental protection, smart appliances, digital creativity and other fields to accelerate the layout of emerging industries. By the end of 2020, 224 strategic emerging enterprises in Huainan had achieved an annual output value of 30.54 billion yuan.
"In fact, the low house price is not the disadvantage of Huainan. The house price in Hefei is three times that of Huainan, but the per capita disposable income in Huainan is two-thirds that of Hefei. This proves that Huainan has a stronger sense of happiness and still holds resources. Huainan has the basic strength for the success of economic transformation." Xie Ming said.
(at the request of the interviewer, Zhang Quan and Xie Ming are pseudonyms in the text)
