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...Beijing and Shanghai. Real estate mania has become so intense that it has spilled over into pop culture. Last year one of the most popular television shows was a weekly drama entitled Wo Ju (literally "Dwelling Narrowness"), which focused on the plight of a young couple who spend two-thirds of their monthly income keeping up the mortgage on a tiny Shanghai apartment. Their tale is all too real. As economist Xie points out, residential prices in China relative to per capita income are far and away the highest in the world. The housing price-to-income ratio in urban...
...less than 15 years down the road from a nasty bout of inflation - consumer prices rose a staggering 21% in 1994 - the Chinese regard real estate as vital security (what Tsinghua's Chovanec calls the "bar of gold" syndrome). Yang says he hasn't even tried to rent out two of his three apartments because "it's not that important to gain income from them; there is security in just owning them. They are paid for, and I know that if I ever get into any kind of economic trouble I can sell them. That's real security...
Smuggling along Egypt's border with Hamas-ruled Gaza via underground tunnels has skyrocketed in the past two years, driven by an Israeli blockade on the Strip. Smuggled goods have become the Palestinian territory's only lifeline outside of aid and a valuable source of income to Sinai's marginalized Bedouin. But from a security standpoint, the trade is a round-the-clock law-and-order concern - particularly guarding against the transport of weapons and persons - and one that Mwafi says yields daily intercepts and arrests. "We are always in a situation because we are near Gaza and Israel," says...
Last month, Bedouin killed two policemen and freed suspects who were on their way to a court hearing. And in November, clashes injured 11 police officers when they tried to seize cement bound for the Gaza tunnels. (There is precedent for worse: in November 2008, violence erupted after police killed three Bedouin during a protest; Bedouin retaliated by kidnapping 25 police officers and overrunning a police post. In 2007, Bedouin protesters set fire to the ruling-party headquarters in Al-Arish.) (See the line of political succession in Egypt...
Israel occupied the Sinai Peninsula from 1967 to 1982, and despite a cold peace between the two states for the past three decades, intense animosity toward the Jewish state continues to dominate the Egyptian national consciousness. To the authorities of North Sinai, then, the sheer notion that there were Bedouin willing to side with Israel over Egypt constituted nothing short of the most serious treason. "Journalists should depend on official sources," declared Mosaad Arug, a member of the North Sinai local council, in a meeting convened to confront TIME's reporter about the story. "The people...