I must live in Beijing because I work in Beijing. My wife works. Our child is a special needs student and many international programs in Beijing start at 80,000 RMB and go up from there. We looked at many schools in Beijing and the average is around 120,000 RMB for the better schools that employ actual teachers that have licenses, relevant degrees, and a school with an actual curriculum that can stand up to western standards. The apartment has already gone up in value by 400,000 in the short time that we owned this one so buying instead of renting makes sense. The apartment that we owned before this went up in value 700,000 RMB in about 10-months time. Moreover, with Chinese culture and Chinese families it is expected that the husband provides a home for the family. With my spouse not wanting to leave China, which is another issue, owning a home here makes sense.

If we really wanted to rough it, we could enroll our foreign kid in an all Chinese public school where the child could be ruined for life, and we could live in some falling down apartment well outside of 6th ring road and we could spent 2-hours per day in a commute each way.

Or I can keep working 5 minutes from our home, live in a nice place that my company pays all of the mortgage on based on the housing allowance, and earn money on a property that someone else is paying for while our child gets the special attention that they need from people we know that we can trust and don't need to worry about.