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China Bet It All on Real Estate. Now Its Economy Is Paying the Price.
China's breakneck growth was enabled by housing construction, and coal in a way that created problems of climate change. Now China's largest housing developers Evergrande and Country Garden together have a staggering $500 billion in debt and in serious financial trouble in or near default. How will China's government respond? It let Evergrande who had defaulted on debt payments build 300,000 apartments last year, just to protect home buyers. Now it's founder Mr. Xu is taken in for questioning and "illegal crimes." Making sure that the apartments on which people made deposits are built would cost another $72 billion, says Nomura. Yet suppliers, painters, builders and brokers are owed another $390 billion, in one estimate. And foreign creditors are getting together for complicated restructurings. Evergrande had entered wealth management promising 8 or 9% returns and has stopped making payments. All this is affecting public confidence in the future and China's growth story.
For decades China depended on housing construction for high growth rates. Now the process is unwinding with both in financial difficulties. This NYT report says that after Evergrande's default, Country Garden failed to make a payment on $200 billion in debt last week and has 400,000 apartments that it sold but has not finished building.
Unintended consequences of China's years of hyper growth- climate change and sharply slowing growth
07/31/2022
China's overdependence on the property sector and foreign investment in offshoring factories from home countries to China had unintended effects. The property sector led growth has led to sudden collapse with local governments finances strained by $900 billion according to WSJ and loss of buyer confidence. The effects on communities in the US and EU of shifting local factories to China is well known having alienated the US and EU public, and permanently damaging friendly relations leading to its reversal and shift back to home countries. Years of unbridled hyper growth has not done well for China with the consequences seen today. At the start of this experiment China embarked on in 1990 China had little experience with market economy. The self interested advice of American investment banks and business and the zeal of local government officials led to hyper growth. The US and EU countries could not cope with the scale of China's hyper growth and shift of factories overseas as they had done with Japan in the sixties and seventies because of the sheer scale and compression in a short period for China. The result is sharply slowing growth in China and loss of faith on both sides. It did not have to happen this way and shows the unintended consequences of letting capitalism go its own way with interested parties acting excessively and governments not acting where prudence is needed. The burning of coal in unlimited quantities created the problems of climate change the world faces today- a double blow for the world and for China with lessons for today and how we think about his in future.
Grouped Articles
China’s Manufacturing Sector Unexpectedly Contracts Amid Weak Demand, Covid Lockdowns
WSJ 07/31/2022
China’s Economy Tested by Strained City Finances
WSJ 07/31/2022
China Home Sales Plunge in July, as Mortgage Revolt Deters Buyers
WSJ 07/31/2022
China property sales could plunge by one-third, analysts say, as crisis deepens
The Guardian 07/26/2022
China Bet It All on Real Estate. Now Its Economy Is Paying the Price.
NYTimes.com 10/16/2023
China and the World Face a Double Blow from decades of housing construction enabled hyper growth- creating problems of climate change for the World and a slump in growth in 2023
10/16/2023
Decades of growth at 12-14% have left China and the World worse off. As Greg Ip pointed out in WSJ America could not cope with this hyper growth in a country many times the size of Japan after absorbing the growth of Japan in the sixties. The result was the closing down of factories and ever increasing imports from China until America had transferred its manufacturing prowess to China. This led to the societal breakdown in the US with communities dependent on factories across the US feeling the brunt. The other effects were an unprecedented in scale use of coal and fossil fuels to fuel hyper growth rates in China that created the problems of World Climate Change by 2023 and contamination of water, land and air inside China. By 2030 China will be aging rapidly similar to Japan today and the slowing economy in 2024 onwards could mean China will be stuck in the Middle Income category. All this poses lessons for America, for Europe, India and the World on what kind of growth is healthy and what kind is not, what is sustainable growth and what is not,what works well for the planet and what does not.
Grouped Articles
China Bet It All on Real Estate. Now Its Economy Is Paying the Price.
NYTimes.com 10/16/2023
An Even Bigger Housing Crisis Threatens China’s Economy
WSJ 09/18/2023
Is China’s Economic Predicament as Bad as Japan’s? It Could Be Worse
WSJ 09/19/2023
China’s Economy Remains Shaky After Challenging Summer
WSJ 10/13/2023
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