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.

[–] massive_bereavement@kbin.social 6 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) (3 children)

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.

[–] doubtingtammy@lemmy.ml 12 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago)

And there's no welfare [in China]

Lol. They're really scraping the bottom of the barrel with China Bad propaganda

[–] nekandro@lemmy.ml 2 points 8 months ago (1 children)

There has always been and will always be government bonds.

[–] massive_bereavement@kbin.social 1 points 8 months ago

[+] octopus_ink@lemmy.ml -8 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) (1 children)

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.

[–] Joncash2@lemmy.ml 12 points 8 months ago (2 children)

China has said they will bail out the regular people. What they're doing is they're buying the homes at a discounted price from the people and turning them into subsidized housing. To quote the article:

“We will scale up the building and supply of government-subsidized housing and improve the basic systems for commodity housing to meet people’s essential need for a home to live in and their different demands for better housing,”

So there's no bailout for the property developers but they are controlling the loss for regular folks.

I'm sorry people downvoted you without explaining that. I know it's hard to read the entire article sometimes.

[–] octopus_ink@lemmy.ml 7 points 8 months ago (1 children)

Ah well my cynicism was unwarranted and I should have more than skimmed the article. Thanks for the clarification.

[–] Joncash2@lemmy.ml 11 points 8 months ago (1 children)

Well it's also important to note that western media is intentionally not reporting on this properly and putting what I said as remarks at the end of articles. There's two reasons for this.

This has never happened before. Countries usually just bail out their property developers and hope they'll build cheaper housing. IE USA Circa 2008. So we really don't know what the outcome of this is. Wall St of course hates this and is terrified of this. I mean if it works and other countries follow suit in the future, what would that mean for all the Wall St. billionaires.
Obviously the usual China bad narrative. The west really really doesn't want any Chinese actions to be viewed in a positive light.

So here's a Korean article that explains it better and isn't as influenced by western media.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/companies/xi-jinping-s-socialist-solution-china-s-response-to-the-real-estate-crisis/ar-BB1iDuXM

The key take away point is, stop believing US media, it's absolutely shit propaganda. I'm not saying China is good, hell I agree with the Koreans that this might not work, but for the love of god don't believe USA.

[–] HobbitFoot@thelemmy.club 8 points 8 months ago (1 children)

You are also having people with a wrong understanding of the Chinese property crisis by trying to map it to the American Great Recession, when the two problems are very different.

For instance, Evergrande is a real estate developer, not a bank. Evergrande going broke is like if Toll Brothers went broke in the USA. It would be bad, but it isn't the end of the financial world.

Second, China doesn't have the mortgage industry that the USA does. China has mortgages, but a large part of the market is owned as investments. You also have to pay a lot more as a down payment compared to the USA. So, the exposure that the Chinese banking industry has to this is a lot less than what happened in the USA in 2007/8. However, this means that people are more at risk in losing money on their real estate.

Third, while housing in the USA is an investment that some people take, there are generally other ways Americans invest their money to save for retirement. In China, a greater percentage of the population saves for retirement by buying property. Given China's demographic issues, this can be a problem if a lot of retirees lose a significant part of their nest eggs.

Fourth, municipalities and provinces can't set their own taxes and the national government hasn't been giving them enough money to pay for services. Local revenue generation has been handled through real estate development. There has not been a plan released yet to handle the loss of revenue or dealing with municipal debt. National plans for real estate development are removing the profit incentive, so how does that impact local budgets?

Some of these points are covered in your article. However, even in this thread, the discussions seem to be trying to view China's property crisis through an American lens when the mechanics behind both are very different.

[–] Joncash2@lemmy.ml 2 points 8 months ago (1 children)

Sure, I completely agree with everything you have said. And the sad reality of news right now in the English speaking world has a US bias for obvious reasons. My link to a S.Korean paper is still a link to a US ally. They're not as biased as USA itself, but won't escape all influences. It's unfortunate at best.

[–] HobbitFoot@thelemmy.club 2 points 8 months ago (1 children)

Yeah, but I feel like you would get biases from Chinese sources as well. This property crisis seems to be the worst economic crisis that China has dealt with for a generation and the party has seemed to lean more on the mandate of heaven justification for them to stay in power.

And a government dealing with a loss of legitimacy during a financial crisis isn't just a Chinese issue, but it appears to be something that current Chinese leadership has no experience in handling given their decades of economic growth.

So I would expect Chinese sources to paint a rosier picture of the crisis, focusing on punishing the greedy developers while trying to stifle discussions on reforming the municipal tax bases or the role of local officials being a key part in property overdevelopment.

[–] Joncash2@lemmy.ml 3 points 8 months ago

Absolutely, it's incredibly annoying everyone has a bias. But that's what we are going to see as the world splits into 2. In many ways it's inevitable. I'm just appreciative that at least for now, both sides seem to be opposed to war, with distressingly USA seemingly more likely to start it. Since historically when you have 2 superpowers, war is the first thing that they used to do.

[–] xantoxis@lemmy.world 0 points 8 months ago

Don't be sorry that people downvoted. This site attracts uninformed bullshit like flies to shit, and a lot of us are just tired of explaining to everyone that the facts are there in the article. My limit is 25 wildly incorrect but confident comments before I stop trying to inform people.

[–] realharo@lemm.ee 1 points 8 months ago (1 children)

What about all those unfinished buildings that people got in debt to buy?

[–] RestrictedAccount@lemmy.world 9 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) (3 children)

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.

[–] realharo@lemm.ee 2 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) (1 children)

But what is the actual real-world practical solution for those people?

Are they now just going to be broke (or even in debt) with no place to live?

[–] Alsephina@lemmy.ml 3 points 8 months ago

Someone buying an unfinished building likely already has a home. If they don't they can buy one for much cheaper now since housing prices have gone down cuz of the real estate bubble popping.

[–] HobbitFoot@thelemmy.club 2 points 8 months ago (2 children)

So what are you going to do with the millions of people relying on that for their retirement savings?

[–] Holyginz@lemmy.world 3 points 8 months ago

🤷‍♂️

[–] explodicle@local106.com 1 points 8 months ago

IMO Social Security is a better solution because not everyone has extra money to invest, and any class of investment can crash.

[–] gandalf_der_12te@feddit.de 2 points 8 months ago

They have over a billion excess homes.

Which is good, because it keeps costs of living down, amiright?