Chinese buildings go unfinished as cash crunch hits local developers

MicroWave@lemmy.world to World News@lemmy.world – 177 points –
Chinese buildings go unfinished as cash crunch hits local developers
asia.nikkei.com

Debt-laden local government financing vehicles face soaring bond yields

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Probably for the best. Search on youtube for tofu dreg construction.

You can see people digging out load bearing columns with their fingers, pulling door frames off the wall with minimal effort, bending and cracking rebar steel with one hand.

oof, i still remember the one where a guy pulled out balcony railing posts with seemingly no effort.

it was high up too, at least 20th floor.

That shit is fucking scary. Have you seen the videos where shit just falls off buildings and narrowly misses a person? Apparently they aren't so lucky so often.

So, personal story:

I was at their biggest glory internet company almost a decade ago, they had a brand new huge campus that sprawled over acres, and in hindsight its clear they just tried to copy Google.

Roof constantly leaked (buckets everywhere), holes in the floor of all things, walls crumbling. They'd moved in 1-2 years earlier and it was considered a point of Chinese national pride. No a/c either, which was brutal in the summers.

They need to stop building before more people get hurt.

Sounds like the train station that was recently flooded because they didn't build any proper drainage

This same building had literally millions of dollars of servers lying around the floors, the whole thing was surreal.

These projects, which had questionable profitability to begin with, were hit hard by the country's real estate slump and its zero-COVID pandemic restrictions. The company's cash flows deteriorated, and it has faced numerous lawsuits, including over unpaid bills.

Hasn't this been a problem for years? I seem to remember stories like this from 10 years ago, but for different reasons.

There were empty cities, but they usually got filled within a few years of construction. Now, it is at the point where the cities aren't being finished.

China Evergrande filed for bankruptcy today, it's over.

I thought evergrande crashed and burned like 2 years ago. How is this still going on?

2 years ago was the default, today was bankruptcy.

Defaulting means youre behind on payments. Bankruptcy is when you file for methods to discharge the payments.

One developer was so broke, but it still tried to make do:

The group's real estate development income plummeted from 1.1 billion yuan in 2021 to zero in 2022, according to China Chengxin Credit Ratings. It has even started selling corn and jujube fruit as a new business.