Even China's 1.4 billion population can't fill all its vacant homes, former official says
Even China's 1.4 billion population can't fill all its vacant homes, former official says
China's property sector, once the pillar of the economy, has slumped since 2021 when real estate giant China Evergrande Group defaulted on its debt obligations following a clampdown on new borrowing.
Even China's population of 1.4 billion would not be enough to fill all the empty apartments littered across the country, a former official said on Saturday, in a rare public critique of the country's crisis-hit property market.
China's property sector, once the pillar of the economy, has slumped since 2021 when real estate giant China Evergrande Group (3333.HK) defaulted on its debt obligations following a clampdown on new borrowing.
Big-name developers such as Country Garden Holdings (2007.HK) continue to teeter close to default even to this day, keeping home-buyer sentiment depressed.
As of the end of August, the combined floor area of unsold homes stood at 648 million square metres (7 billion square feet), the latest data from the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) show.
That would be equal to 7.2 million homes, according to Reuters calculations, based on the average home size of 90 square metres.
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The world is really lucky that China's not doing that great at the moment. Not so long ago, China was winning the propaganda war internationally.
You don't want authoritarianism to win the argument by out-performing democracies.
I agree. I don't think we had or have anything to fear. The Chinese educational system is built around obedience, cultural homogeneity, and rote learning. Sure, there are fewer protests, and there is less crime, but also a SEVERE lack of innovation. I can count on one hand the number of innovations China has exported to the world in the last decade. Everything they build of note is based on stolen IP and figurative and literal slave labour. The world is finally clamping down on the former, and China's social progression to a service-based economy is putting an end to the latter. Their comparative competitive advantages are eroding by the day.
and there is less crime
I wouldn't necessarily bet on this, authoritarian states are breeding grounds for corruption and that in turn fuels crime. I wouldn't be surprised if China has a problem with criminality that the government, at least on a local level, not only turns a blind eye to but is complicit in.
They've hit the middle income trap while simultaneously upsetting all their trading partners. It's not going to be a pretty fall from grace. Fake numbers saying how awesome things are only work for so long.
I suspect a major reason for Putin's most recent crimes was to prevent his people learning how much their neighbours are prospering.
Why doesn't China count as a democracy? People vote and the votes get counted and decide who runs things.
Why doesn't North Korea count as a democracy? People vote and the votes get counted and decide who runs things. /s
Hmm, why isn't the one-party state is considered a democracy? Truly baffling.
Why do you think voting for party is the only form of democracy?
Why don't you?
why dont we want that if its outperforming democracies
Ah the old “ends justify the means” argument. I’ve seen this one before somewhere
"the means", of course, being out-performing democracies
Can you give a briefer on how it's outperforming democracies? I don't mean to be confrontational, I really want to hear why you think that.
i dont have a briefer on how its outperforming democracies, im not the one that came up with that premise
Wait, what? But you said:
why dont we want that if its outperforming democracies
“the means”, of course, being out-performing democracies
I'm missing something here
hyperreality said
You don’t want authoritarianism to win the argument by out-performing democracies.
i argued based on that premise
you can tell because of the use of the word "if" in this sentence
why dont we want that >if< its outperforming democracies
if that premise was nonsense from the start they probably shouldnt have run an argument off it
Ahh, right, thank you for clarifying. The way the thread is structured made it seem like you were the one claiming that even though you were bouncing off the other comment. I'll need to be more careful.
Show me a single democracy anywhere in the world.
Alright I'll bite, what makes the world's declared democracies actually undemocratic in your mind?
Billionaires directly or indirectly buying elections, politicians, drafting policies, funding propaganda, regulatory capture, etc.
The democratic world doesn't start and end with America
I live in Denmark. All liberal democracies are subject to the whims of billionaires.
Edit: oh wait, you're Canadian. That's fucking hilarious.
Sure, and I’ll agree that many places are actual democracies, but that doesn’t mean they’re free from corruption. You’re both sort of right. There are democracies that work. But none of them are without corruption.
The corruption is baked into the system. I did not have anything illegal in mind when I wrote that list.
There can be no democracy without economic democracy.
There can be no democracy without economic democracy.
Economic democracies are even rarer than political ones, and I'm not aware of any actually complete one. Europe still gets you closest, especially Germany and Austria, with very strong co-determination laws, in Germany's case reserving 50% - 1 board seats for the shop floor council -- the workers don't need much capital in that case to control the company.
And as far as I'm aware there's not, and never has been, a single country that is not politically a democracy that would be an economic democracy. Certain people might be thinking of state capitalist countries in that context but those never liked worker control of anything, not unions, not shop floor councils, not nothing. They just dressed themselves in it. Ask, random example, Solidarność.
I'm aware.
Its a democracy when you're in the global north, it's autocracy when you're in the global south.
I love how you're getting downvoted, likely by people who feel a sense of enlightenment in that they can identify Chinese propaganda that has been pointed out to them as such but have no clue about propaganda originating from their own country or from a country theirs is allied with.
Why is propaganda always the go-to argument? Even if I identify US propaganda, it doesn't make me more or less likely to hate it, which I don't, even if I disapprove of some of their measures as much as I do of my own country. It's such a baffling argument.
Because most people are steeped in propaganda they don't see.
You say you don't hate USA. You should. The US state is engaged in several ongoing genocides. Can you name them?
"You should" 😂 Sounds to me like you have an agenda and are spreading propaganda of your own. But please, enlighten me on those genocides with reliable sources.
I have convictions that inform my opinions. I think it's obvious that any decent person should hate USA, given their many, many crimes.
I guess you could characterize all communication as propaganda, but that seems rather pointless.
It's not pointless to say that when it's clear that you want to drive public opinion by only emphasizing and exaggerating the bad without sources. It's the literal definition of propaganda.
I still welcome that list of ongoing genocides with their credible sources.
I'm not driving anything. I'm just a dude commenting on a public forum. You're being very silly. 🙄
When did I volunteer to educate you? That you can't answer, and seemingly think the very notion is ridiculous, is exactly the point.
Then why the need to denigrate the US and insist that there are active genocides without providing evidence? This isn't about educating anyone, it's about supporting your own claims. Very sus.
I live in Scandinavia. Please enlighten me about my country's propaganda
CEPOS
Scandinavia is a country?
You've generalised the whole world, what's a few countries?
You've generalized my post to completely omit the "or from a country theirs is allied with" so you can cut the smartass act.
According to the Danes, definitely.
Ironically, founded to "stop the encroachment by the Germans" the Kalmar union first had a Pommeranian King, and then a Saxon one.