‘Empty houses everywhere': Former Chinese official's rare public critique on China's economy

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Hindustan Times. Since 2021, after real estate giant China Evergrande group defaulted on its debt obligations, the property sector has slumped in China. Even big firm like Country Garden Holdings continue to fall close to default.

According to data from the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS), the combined floor area of unsold homes stood at 648 million square metres at the end of August 2023. Exciting news! Mint is now on WhatsApp Channels :rocket: Subscribe today by clicking the link and stay updated with the latest financial insights! Click here! Paste this on click here: https://whatsapp.com/channel/0029Va91YSeGehEM6oMesj3d This equals to almost 7.2 million homes based on the average home size of 90 square metres, news agency Reuters reported, adding that numerous residential projects have already been sold but not yet completed due to cash-flow problems.

"How many vacant homes are there now? Each expert gives a very different number, with the most extreme believing the current number of vacant homes are enough for 3 billion people," He Keng, a former deputy head of the statistics bureau, said. "That estimate might be a bit much, but 1.4 billion people probably can't fill them," he explained at a forum in the southern Chinese city Dongguan, according to a video released by the official media China News Service.

Earlier, a spokesperson at the foreign ministry asserted that the Chinese economy is "resilient". "All sorts of comments predicting the collapse of China's economy keep surfacing every now and then, but what has collapsed is such rhetoric, not China's economy," the spokesperson said at a recent news conference.