What’s new: Huawei Technologies Co. Ltd. got a sweetheart deal on a piece of industrial land in its home city of Shenzhen, apparently paying a below market price for the over-500,000-square-meter plot, said a source close to the southern city’s industrial real estate industry.
The low price shows that the city government values industrial businesses because “they can increase tax revenue, and in turn, have positive effects on society,” the source told Caixin.
The tech giant paid 298 million yuan ($46.6 million) for the plot, which is large enough to accommodate buildings with up to 760,000 square meters of total floor space, according to a notice (link in Chinese) released Tuesday by the Shenzhen Public Resources Trading Platform.
Based on that amount of floor space, the plot cost Huawei less than 400 yuan per square meter. According to an official document released in May, the local government had set a price of 725 yuan to 1,245 yuan per square meter for industrial lands in that district.
Huawei hasn’t disclosed what it intends to do with the plot. The source speculated that the company will most likely use it for a research and development base.
Background: Shenzhen has been working to develop emerging industries over the past three years. Between January 2020 and this past Monday, the city had sold the land-use rights for more than 1.84 million square meters of industrial land on 55 plots, according to real estate consultancy Cushman & Wakefield Inc.
Huawei has been working to expand into new businesses since U.S. sanctions cut off its access to the key components it needs to make smartphones.
Contact reporter Manyun Zou (manyunzou@caixin.com) and editor Michael Bellart (michaelbellart@caixin.com)
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