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.
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.
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.