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Recent data shows that the average rent-to-salary ratio in Beijing is 58 percent. Some expats say they are not surprised because rent is expensive in Beijing. Photo: IC Helena Javitte, 28, from France has just moved into her new apartment in Xinyuan Xili in Chaoyang district. It is her third apartment in her four years in Beijing. For Javitte, who works at Sanlitun SOHO and commutes via scooter, a convenient location is the top priority, followed by the apartment and its price in that order. Her rent is about 40 percent of her wages, but she thinks it's worth the convenience. "I'm willing to spend more money than average on the apartment," she said. According to a recent report released by Shanghai-based E-house China R&D Institute, the average rent-to-income ratio in Beijing is as high as 58 percent, followed by Shenzhen, Guangdong Province with 54 percent, Sanya, Hainan Province with 48 percent and Shanghai with 48 percent. The figure has triggered discussions...

There were nine of us living in my first flat in Paris. It was grand on the outside, with a trompe l’oeil and marble staircase in the entrance hall, but grimy and dark inside. Only three of my flatmates had full-time jobs, and they all smoked. All the lights in the hall were broken. I moved there from London nearly four years ago, during the gloomiest days of François Hollande’s presidency, long before the youthful reformer Emmanuel Macron took power this year. Economic growth at the time was weak, unemployment double that of the UK today, and polls showed two-thirds of French people thought the nation was in “decline”. My flatmates, who I found online, were all 25- to 35-year-olds from the provinces who had come to Paris to find work and, passing their days in our tiny kitchen, were victims of this faded France. Within rigid labour markets many struggled to find jobs, or the right jobs, and were frustrated and angry. They protested in the street, talked incessantly about politics a...