So if a Westerner is married to a Chinese and obliged to live in China, you would suggest that he should rent a flat rather than buy a flat?

In the UK I rent a flat but I know full well that if I was able to get a mortgage to buy I would be paying out on the repayments less than it costs to pay rent. Paying rent is always dead money, don't you think? Therefore, even if China is potentially unstable enough to deprive me of my mortgaged property, I might leave China better off than if I had rented a flat? This is a question more than a fact because I don't know how much it costs to rent and how much it costs to buy. Does anybody know so we can do our sums? I understand this much that a Westerner can get a mortgage in China if he's linked to a Chinese wife. My friends wife has told me that.