Pack n send has been following alternative uses for containers used in freight and cargo shipping. This article from NBC news caught our attention because the the term “pod” housing.
Huang Rixin, a spritely 78-year-old former engineer turned Beijing landlord, has made a name for himself in recent months producing cage like 21.5 square-foot living spaces dubbed " capsule apartments ” for the capital’s burgeoning class of jobless and underemployed college graduates.
Two Chinese men sit in their own small spaces in capsule apartments in Beijing, China, in a photo taken June 12, 2010.
Taking Japan’s famous capsule hotels for inspiration, Huang has improved on previous iterations of his pod houses by doubling the size of the rooms and including more shelf space. Huang views his pods, with rent of about $51 a month, as a cost-effective way to house the estimated 3 million recent university graduates seeking employment or earning less than the average starting salary of approximately $400 a month.
In many ways his capsule apartments highlight the social and economic problems that belie China’s gaudy GDP numbers.
Even as the national economy surges, China’s per-capita income has simply not kept pace, and millions of people have been left out of the nation’s economic miracle.
While China’s liberalized economic policy has certainly pulled hundreds of millions of people out of poverty and transformed the country into an industrial dynamo, little of that prosperity has trickled down to the majority of would-be Chinese consumers – the very people who many economic experts insist will fuel China’s growth well into the 21st century.
In essence, China is still the largest market in the world for virtually everything, and despite claims otherwise, Chinese consumers are very willing spenders. However, Chinese wages are currently so low that consumers simply are unable to contribute to domestic consumption unless serious wealth redistribution or salary adjustment occurs.
Whether that economic stature is fleeting – as it was for the Japan – or relatively more long-term, as it has been for the U.S., will bear close watching.
Pack n send has reproduced portions of this story from NBC News' Arata Yamamoto contributed to this report from Tokyo.
For more information on shipping freight and cargo from the United States, please feel free to contact pack n send at 713 266 1450.
We pick up & deliver worldwide, as well as in our backyard.