Thu December, 2020, Age: 3 years
Repeated efforts by China’s central government to restrain its rapidly growing and overleveraged real estate industry have floundered, with the incentives of households, developers and local bureaucrats all aligned to keeping the show on the road. As time goes on, the risks aren’t just of losses and defaults, but waste: Plowing large proportions of the country’s income into an asset market with no yield has consequences for prosperity and productivity.