If the leaks and rumors are true, Beijing stands ready to launch a new and radical solution to the economy’s property crisis – a government takeover. What the authorities refer to as “a new model” would replace the old emphasis on ownership with more rentals and use government funds to buy up bankrupt properties so that in time the government’s role in real estate would rise from 5% of the market at present to 30%. Such an act would surely take the nation back to its communist roots if not quite the days of Mao Zedong. If it would veil the property crisis for a time, it would in the long run do tremendous damage to China’s economic prospects.

xi-peel

  • Zuzak [fae/faer, she/her]
    ·
    10 months ago

    Prior to 2020, Beijing actively encouraged residential real estate development. . . [Developers persued] increasingly dubious projects so that even as China was meeting its housing needs. . . Then in 2020, Beijing abruptly removed all this support.

    So they funded housing development until there were plenty of houses at which point they stopped funding more development and this is bad for some reason? What did they want them to do, continue encouraging development when there wasn't a need for it solely to prop up the investors?

    • BurgerPunk [he/him, comrade/them]
      ·
      10 months ago

      What did they want them to do, continue encouraging development when there wasn't a need for it solely to prop up the investors?

      Unironically yes. Liberalism is crazy

    • Rod_Blagojevic [none/use name]
      ·
      10 months ago

      If they had done that, then we could get more of the stories about the ghost cities that are the harbinger of China's imminent collapse. I've been reading those articles for decades. They've kept a lot of journalists busy.

      • Raebxeh
        ·
        10 months ago

        Imagine taking a city’s population growth chart, extrapolating the data out 5 years, and including the projected need to housing in your 5 year plan. These damn commies are way too prepared for predictable trends. Suspicious.

    • nilloc@discuss.tchncs.de
      ·
      10 months ago

      Well, they are leaving out how demand fell off a cliff after Beijing locked everyone in their high rise apartments for a year or more.

      • Zuzak [fae/faer, she/her]
        ·
        10 months ago

        Imagine the government listening to the science and using public health measures to save millions of lives instead of demanding everybody go die so the quarterly profits aren't interrupted.

        covid-coolsolidarityporky-happy