Beijing tombs are not to die for

Housing prices in Beijing are on the rise, but the city's tomb prices are going up even faster, at the minimum rate of 30 percent each year. In some areas, prices now soar as high as 400,000 yuan (US$65,580) per square meter. Beijing is becoming a city where it is both too expensive to live and die.

Fushouyuan, a funeral undertaking company, recently went public in Hong Kong, stating in its IPO document that its gross profit rate in the first half of 2013 had reached 80.4 percent. According to the company, graveyard sales accounted for more than 85 percent of revenues and the average price for a tomb had risen from 98,000 yuan in 2011, to 150,000 yuan (US$24,790) in 2013.

"It's difficult not to associate such stunning high profits with words like 'monopoly,'" said Yang Genlai, a funeral industry expert. "The rising graveyard prices are an indisputable fact. But they went up too steeply in recent years," he said.

"Death is fair to everyone, except for tomb prices. Rich people can build stylish tombs; but then what will the poor do?"

Sun Tong, an undertaker working at a roadside funeral shop near Beijing's renowned Babaoshan cemetery, said they offer "the entire A-Z service for a funeral, with the price for the entire package around 30,000 yuan (US$4,959), excluding the tomb's expenses."

The undertaker said this was already a favorable price, but did admit that the expenses were in no way comparable to those you must pay for a tomb chamber.

"It's difficult to give one average price. The cheapest one is around 40,000 yuan (US$6,612) and there's no upper limit for the expensive ones," he said, admitting it was "indeed too expensive to die in Beijing."

Yet the cheapest ones on his sales list were not located in Babaoshan, which in 2012 offered 120 tomb spots to ordinary citizens, whereas the majority of the cemetery accommodates late high-ranking state leaders and other prominent figures.

"Don't even think about it. Those ones cost 1 million yuan (US$165,290) each, and their purchase takes some connections," he said, explaining that speculation has pushed the prices even further upwards.

In a bid to solve the problem, tombs with limited property rights were recently unveiled. These particular cemeteries are meant for people from nearby communities and do not bear any commercial property, meaning that they are not to be resold.

However, in practice, people whose household registries are in other places can still buy them through undertaking agencies who assure customers of their "hard-core connections." Hence, these tomb prices too are still not within the financial means of the average person.

The government in the 1990s started to remove the threshold for private capital to enter the country's funeral industry. Yet after two decades of development, civil affairs departments still have a firm grip on the sector.

"Profit is the simple underlying reason. In such a monopoly, the government and cemetery authorities split the profits," said Yin Xufei, a CIConsulting researcher.

One anonymous insider explained that in many "private cemeteries, the deans are appointed by the local Bureau of Civil Affairs. Outsiders just don't know."