this post was submitted on 25 Aug 2025
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China does many things wrong but housing isn't one of them.
Americans will decry the American housing crisis and simultaneously mock China for over production of housing which caused a housing price crash.
"I can't afford a house!" "China is so stupid, they have empty cities."
The joke of the "China is building empty cities" mythology is in how quickly they filled up with people. So you had this echoing "New City is empty!" scandal that reverberated all the way from Fujian to Qinghai.
There was a problem of housing speculation, as investors tried to get out ahead of the building frenzy. But the state government intervened to curb that practice. There was a problem of shady contractors and construction crews shaving quality for profit, even leading to a couple of high profile building collapses. But the state government sent out investigators, prosecuted delinquents, and provided restitution to the injured and defrauded. There was a problem of matching the housing stock to the available employment, particularly during the economic slowdown in the wake of SARS in the early '00s and then COVID in '19. But the state government intervened to quarantine, vaccinate, and restabilize the local economies.
Curiously, the US loves to report on the crises. We never like to talk about the recoveries. Instead, you get this doggedly fixation on pivotal moments in the past that endure long after they are relevant. It would be like reading newspapers and hearing radio about Florida, where everyone brought up the '08 Housing Crash at every opportunity. They dogmatically insisted that real estate prices can't recover, even in the middle of a construction boom and new speculation bubble a decade later.
This misinformation that persists in any kind of conversation is deafening. It's gotten to the point that some random guy can do a livestream YouTube vacation blog in Chengdu and western critics lose their fucking minds in disbelief. Like, the very idea that everyone in the country isn't still living in 1980s levels of rural poverty is entirely unimaginable.
They're building infrastructure. Infrastructure enables economic growth.
The US builds nothing but more luxury homes, casinos and sports stadiums.... and whatever fast food trend is growing.
I know it's not quite that simple, but it sure feels like it sometimes.
It's kinda worse than that. The US financialized the luxury homes and casinos and sports stadiums. So they're paying a vig on a vig to give a tiny minority the 1980s conception of luxury.
Enormous sums of money just get recirculated into speculative investment. This has created the cryptocurrency surge - yet another layer of speculative investment - and the ballooning investment in AI as a means of automating marketing and debt collection.
We've done the Economy That Just Makes Paperclips except without the paperclips.