I really hope that SH will overcome the chinese invasion and yet again become a nice beach town with a laid back attidude. The beaches will always draw a crowd.

mannanman wrote: ↑Sat Aug 14, 2021 11:01 am

AndyKK wrote: ↑Sat Aug 14, 2021 2:48 am So if these are the facts of what is coming, or rather what is not. Development in Sihanoukville will turn out to be one of those Chinese ghost towns, but outside of China this time.

Sigh. There’s been no “Chinese ghost towns” for at least 10 years. It’s old news and the same videos get quoted again and again. “Look no people. No cars! = ghost town”. Lol.
And anyway it’s the way they work. Build get infrastructure in then move people in, the opposite of SHV.

Er, well actually there are ghost towns and cities and airports etc in China but that does not mean that the same thing will happen to SHV.
Michael Pettis explains all this very well on Twitter. He is Finance Professor, Peking University, and Senior Fellow, Carnegie-Tsinghua Center. Coincidentally he has just tweeted:

In 2019, the Politburo decided not to use the real estate market as a short-term means to simulate the economy, but that decision was reversed six months later as a result of COVID-19."
Houses are for stimulating economic activity, not for living in.

The government there uses infrastructure development to stimulate GDP to the required level. The required level being whatever the government's target was.
They also have a policy to ensure that real estate prices do not fall. Since there are intermittent bubbles, the lack of any dips mean prices in China have become very high, especially in tier 1 cities. This can be maintained because there are capital controls, i.e. RMB/CNY cannot be freely exchanged for foreign currency. Even so there are signs of strain with the heavy levels of household and corporate debt. The big developer Evergrande has been in the financial news recently and not for good reasons.
Acording to Pettis, the government would love to reduce debt levels but they are more determined to keep GDP levels at their (high) targets. The only way to achieve GDP growth without all that is to have higher consumer spending. Unfortunately the very same policy of high debt causes income inequality and low levels of consumer spending, so there is a bit of a conundrum. Meanwhile the government has understandably decided that it is a good idea to stop its citizens from gambling, especially in places outside of China. This will help with consumer spending growth.

So, what does all this mean for SHV? As I have said, unless there is a change of Chinese government policy on gambling, it (SHV) must ban gambling if it is to attract the Chinese tourist in the numbers it needs. Presumably the casinos can be converted into hotels. The sale of apartments to those tourists can occur so long as capital controls are relaxed enough to permit the necessary cash to come out (which may or may not happen to a sufficient extent). Unlike in China,the prices of those apartments cannot be prevented from falling, since they are denominated in USD. Falls in prices may scare off some buyers, but not all. Therre is a place called Hainan island which is inside China and offers beaches and hotels and apartments and the government may favour that, as it will more definitely favour Macau as a destination for gambling. There will also of course be a market for tourists from countries other than China. And they will also be potential buyers of condos. I think it's fair to say that SHV has a bit of an image problem, however. If it does close the casinos, this may well be addressed quite easily.

Please relax Mannanmar. We want you to make money on your land, but please lets keep the discussion real. And being realistic with the likely scenarios will help you make money.