Even China's 1.4 billion population can't fill all its vacant homes, former official says
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.
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.
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.
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.
No, it's about demonstrating your ignorance of reality due to propaganda.
Besides, it's obvious from your tone that you're going to dismiss anything I say. Why should I waste my time on that?
Then demonstrate it if that's the whole point. Is it that time consuming to copy and paste a URL from your history?
But no, you're just gonna bail at the first person pressing you for sources. Not a good look.
Your answer to why I should waste my time seems to be that it would definitely be a waste of time.
What you're not grasping is that I don't owe you anything. I'm satisfied that you're profoundly ignorant.
Lose the attitude and maybe I'll humor you, but until then adios.
Lol Look at all these excuses and assumptions and now insults that you're making trying to wiggle out of it. Now it's clear to me that you're just making shit up and that you're trying to hide the fact that you got nothing.
Whatever point you thought you were making, you have made the opposite of that. I asked in earnest with an open mind but not so open that my brain falls out at your word. Now I must ask: are the current genocides in the room with us right now? 😂
I live in Scandinavia. Please enlighten me about my country's propaganda
CEPOS