Y’all are dancing on this, but if they go through with it, this is going to cause a run of panic that will wipe out the savings of hundreds of millions of people.
It would in the west, in China they do a controlled crash, i mean it’s already happened, one of their biggest housing companies already crashed and it did not caused anything except rise in home ownership among the people.
There’s a high percentage of Chinese workers that invested their savings in real estate instead of having a pension. And there’s no welfare*, which means a lot of people who will be left on the street when they are too old to work.
*After a complain, I did some research so I can provide enough clarity on my statement:
- A new pensions system was built on top of the previous communist system (1986~1990s), then in 2004 the gov added enterprise annuities and finally, an IRA system was launched.
This last part was launched in 2022, which finally covered about 1.05 billion people. - There is though a difference in which plan can someone join, depending on their residence permit (either rural or urban).
The residence permit doesn’t have a link to where you live, so a rural hukou won’t become an urban hukou just for moving to the city. - Why does this matter? Well, an urban hukou will get about $461 US dollaridoos, while the Old-Age Insurance for Urban and Rural Residents plan (entirely used for rural residence permit holders and unsalaried urbant residents), it’s about $25 US dollars and a smile.
The why enterprise annuities didn’t work (0.25% of companies enrolled) is a very complex one but let’s say is mostly due to the abnormally high statutory pension contribution rate.
So up until 2022, a little more than 500 million people had few options for extra savings beyond those $25 dollars/person, and that was real estate (you know, the thing that always goes up).
With IRAs now, and a possible conversion from the two main basic pension plans into a centralized one, it’s possible newer generations will have a foothold for a safer savings method, however there are several challenges on the horizon:
- All the economic turmoil of COVID-19, foreign firms moving out, pandemic lockdowns, etc… is making it harder to strengthen the pension system.
- Demographic issues and high youth unemployment.
- Runs on small banks.
- Recent cuts on local health care benefits.
- The statutory pension contribution rate was lowered, but is still about 16% Iirc. This means though the pension bags are getting 4% less full every year.
Altogether this could very well be a ticking time bomb.
Ah NOW it makes sense.
There’s a high percentage of Chinese workers that invested their savings in real estate instead of having a pension.
That’s why no bailout. Only the regular folks getting curbstomped by this one.
Edit - Well, this was a wildly unpopular comment, but I don’t know why. 8 people who think everyday folks are as likely to be bailed out as the 1% I guess. Since none of them bothered to comment, I can only speculate.
What about all those unfinished buildings that people got in debt to buy?
They are not needed. There is no one to live in them.
They have over a billion excess homes. It was the only thing that normal people could invest in so they just kept building.
If you bought one as an investment, nobody is going to buy them from you. They are worthless.
Evergrande already went bankrupt in 2021 and the general population in China have been mostly shielded from the damage (except the poor billionaires though 😢)
How were they shielded? Do you have a source I can read? I’m genuinely interested.
I remember reading that there were protests because people bought condos and were essentially told they were never going to get completed. Did those people get a refund from the government or the company?
Not afaik. Anyone buying an unfinished condo though likely already has a home, specially since China’s home-ownership is about 90%.
And if they don’t, they can buy one for much cheaper now cuz house prices have gone down thanks to this real estate bubble being popped. And China already has 600 million vacant homes.
This also coincides with the CPC moving funding from the overinflated real estate sector to the high tech sector btw.
particularly EVs
Geopolitical economy report has a more in-depth video on this.
I dont care about investors when their investing in real estate has caused housing to skyrocket in price and making renting the only option for many people, myself included, while at the same time those same people will rent out at astronomical rates making many of us live more than paycheck to paycheck.
Yes but can they please do this without leaving half finished skyscrapers in other countries? The situation in LA kind of sucks now that the city has to spend millions cleaning it up (supposedly sending the bill to a bankrupt Chinese developer, as if that’ll work).
China has said they are going to take over projects under construction to finish them, which is good.
However, China still has to deal with a property glut, an elderly population who mainly used real estate to save for retirement, and local governments who needed real estate development to fund their budgets.
China is going to have to spend significant parts of its surplus dealing with this.
A property glut? Look at China’s urbanization rate. A short-term oversupply is easily consumed by increasing urbanization. You cannot apply the American model to an economy in a different state of development.
No, and that’s the problem. Ever since Covid, people are leaving major cities and moving to more affordable locations. This is largely due to this new work from home culture. Thus, a lot of these grand skyscraper projects are falling apart globally, the news just likes to focus on China, which in fairness is the largest failure of all the nations.
It’s also important to note that while there is an abandoned skyscraper by a Chinese developer in LA, there are also abandoned skyscrapers in NYC and SF that has nothing to do with China. It’s just a bad market for new buildings since people are leaving cities.
Common China W
waow
