A woman bows to a tombstone in a cemetery in Beijing. Photo: VCG

In China, cemetery plots for the dead are becoming more expensive than apartments for the living as the price per square meter in graveyards has exceeded that of housing in the megacities of Beijing and Shanghai in recent years. 

In 2018, the average sales price of plots in graveyards owned by Hong Kong-listed funeral company Fushouyuan Group has soared 7.5 percent year-on-year to 110,008 yuan ($16,375), according to the company's financial statement. Cemetery plot prices are growing faster than housing prices in China, which recorded a 2.6 percent increase among 50 cities last year. 

Another listed funeral company, Fucheng, also sold graveyard plots for an average price of 94,900 yuan in 2018, according to Global Times' calculation based on the company's financial statement. 

 "In Beijing and Shanghai, the average price for grave sites has exceeded 100,000 yuan a square meter, higher than the local housing price. The most expensive plots can sell for 1 million yuan in Beijing," said a representative from a large Beijing-based funeral services firm, the 21st Century Business Herald reported. 

 "I cannot afford to live nor can I afford to die," a 20-something Beijing-based resident surnamed Shen joked to the Global Times. 

Industry insiders said that rising demand and short supply are the driving factors for high prices at cemeteries.

Beijing is now home to 43 public cemeteries, and the municipality has not approved any more land for cemetery use in the past decade, which means "public cemeteries will run out of supply in one or two years," media reports said. 

Across China, most graveyard plots will be filled by 2023, according to a funeral industry report issued by the Ministry of Civil Affairs in 2013. 

A plot in the cemetery is typically less than one square meter and can be rented for a maximum of 20 years, according to a regulation on funeral and interment.

Another reason behind the high grave prices is that cemeteries are under unified management by authorities and companies cannot easily obtain such land, Yin Bocheng, director of the Shanghai-based Real Estate Research Center at Fudan University, told the Global Times on Sunday.

As a result of the rising price of grave plots, funeral companies have been pocketing hefty profits in recent years, and their gross profit margin has eclipsed that of property developers - one of the most profitable industries in China - and just trailed that of China's top distiller Kweichow Moutai.

The gross profit rate of Fushouyuan's funeral business was 87.96 percent, while that of real estate developer Evergrande was 36.2 percent and that of Vanke was 36.2 percent. Moutai's gross profit surpassed 90 percent.