MIT Center for Real Estate

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FIRE in China

May 17, 18, & 19, 2005


students in China

As part of MIT/CRE’s global initiative, several Forums on Issues and Innovations in Real Estate (FIRE) have been held in China. These events are designed to engage and communicate with members of the real estate industry, and to provide a forum for MIT/CRE partners to focus on topics of particular local interest.

In China, a topic of strong interest has been the recent move by the government to constrain capital available to local developers. As a result, developers who until now have had relatively unrestricted access to capital find themselves eager to learn about how to access foreign sources of investment capital. The MIT/CRE addressed this need with a series of FIRE events on the topic of “Global Trends in Real Estate Capital Markets”

The first FIRE event was held in Beijing on May 17, 2005. Co-sponsored by Merrill Lynch, this forum focused on comparing capital market flows in China with the United States. By looking at the history of how US capital markets in real estate have evolved over the past 30-40 years, developers and investors hoped to gain insight into how markets might evolve in China.

Among the speakers was Zhang Xin, a developer from Beijing, who spoke about the challenges she faced in raising capital in China. Xu Di, an official from China Construction Bank, spoke about the ways in which her organization is looking to alleviate these problems in the future.

The second FIRE event in China was held on May 18, 2005, at Tsinghua University in Beijing. The audience for this forum numbered about 80 graduate and executive education students, and the format was designed to be more informally structured and interactive than the previous FIRE event held for industry participants. The students showed great enthusiasm for the topics.

The final FIRE in China event was held in the Jin Mao tower in Shanghai, one of the tallest buildings in the world, on May 19, 2005. This event was co-sponsored by the ZK Group, a MIT/CRE partner and one of the largest residential developers in Shanghai. Participants heard from a panel that included a real estate professor from Fudan University and the head of the Shanghai Stock Exchange. Much of the discussion focused on concern about a potential “bubble” in Shanghai real estate markets.

Interest in the Shanghai event was so high that although 50 or so participants were expected, over 300 actually attended, including CNN Asia and Reuters. SINA, a major Chinese media outlet, covered the event and published MIT/CRE Chairman Tony Ciochetti’s talk.

The MIT/CRE’s first FIRE series in China was a great success, reaching a wide audience of both industry participants and students, and received press attention in both Beijing and Shanghai. The MIT/CRE hopes to continue its constructive engagement with the real estate industry in Asia.