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Real estate giant China Evergrande will be liquidated

resolutebat
62 replies
19h20m

In the long term, the bursting of China's property bubble is probably good news, affordable housing is in the interest of everybody except property developers.

In the short term, though, this is likely to trigger a domino effect of other property developers defaulting and a lot of pain for everybody who (thought they had) bought property with them. The real tests are whether China will allow the Chinese entity to go bankrupt (and not just the HK one), and what's going to happen to foreign shareholders and ordinary Chinese citizens who trusted these companies with lots of hard-earned money.

One unpredictable ripple effect will also be on the crypto markets: there have been persistent rumors that Tether is heavily invested in Chinese property developers in general and Evergrande in particular.

EZ-E
42 replies
17h6m

In the long term, the bursting of China's property bubble is probably good news, affordable housing is in the interest of everybody except property developers.

I unironically think a property bubble pop is a great way to defeat the demographic slump in the long term.

That and the recent crackdown/reforms on private education makes me think the party is aware that property bubbles and education costs are a liability

pmontra
24 replies
14h51m

The defaults changed, at least in the West.

When I was little it was still married-with-children by default, probably at relatively young age, and people had to decide not to have children. That was in part helped by the lack of widespread use of contraceptives. The norm in my primary school was two or three kids per family. I remember only one classmate with no brothers or sisters. Of course zero children families were not represented in there.

Now the default is single-no-children and you have to make an explicit choice to marry (you used to be nudged into it by society) and to have kids, by stopping to use contraceptives and to do all the things that long time singles are used to do.

Cost of housing, living, parenting is also an issue but I think that the default mindset is more important and sets the conditions for higher general costs: if on average people can spend all their money for themselves, the society and the market adjust and people who have to spend time and money also for kids are at a disadvantage.

If the default is changing in China too, their population is going to shrink no matter what.

saiya-jin
7 replies
13h11m

While I agree with that shrink part, you must be living in a bubble for the family part.

Literally all my colleagues in past 5 jobs (that few hundreds guys) have kids if they are over say 35. All colleagues of my wife. All of our friends. I cover western (Switzerland) and eastern Europe here. Same for Swiss colleagues and foreigners. Folks with nannies or family close but also raising their kids just by themselves, like us.

2 kids are standard, 3 are actually slowly becoming a norm. 1 is rare and more related to medical issues rather than an actual decision. From my own personal experience being raised as a single child, it sucks in many ways and will affect you negatively for rest of your life, regardless of all the love you received from parents (which of course helps but doesnt mitigate this).

KptMarchewa
2 replies
11h31m

I'm 30 and literally none of my friends that age have kids.

corethree
1 replies
9h33m

Where do you live?

KptMarchewa
0 replies
8h51m

Poland.

speeder
1 replies
12h42m

I am curious what country and industry you work. Most developed countries and some major developing ones have less than 2 children per couple in their data. The data is probably correct thus your anecdote would be an exception. Thus makes me wonder what industry is so exceptional?

saiya-jin
0 replies
12h10m

we're in HN, its IT, software dev to be more precise

sverhagen
0 replies
12h47m

Surely there must be some downsides to siblings too. I also don't celebrate being an only child, but it didn't turn me into a misfit either.

And to your anecdotal evidence, let me respond with anecdotal evidence... aren't we constantly hearing news about declining birth rates and an aging population? I have heard this from Korea, Japan, the United States, generally about Europe and specifically about the Netherlands.

seper8
0 replies
12h49m

Your anecdotes don't nullify the data

dathinab
7 replies
12h33m

If the default is changing in China too, their population is going to shrink no matter what.

yes, that might actually be _the_ biggest incoming issue china has (through much much less because of housing prices).

Basically by combining one child politics with various cultural and economic effects lead to a very strongly favor for having a boy over a girl. Combine that with natural reduction in birthrate due to reduction of poverty and some other factors it lead to a situation where China isn't just approaching a shrinking of population size but more like a collapse which could easily lead to various social and economic emergencies (like collapse of rent system, collapse of health system, problems to feed all elderly people etc.). Given the current "moral" direction of their government I wouldn't be surprised that if they don't find a better solution they might either start a war to kill many of their young and mid aged single men and/or start to mass euthanizing old people, at least if sick and/or poor. They even have the perfect excuse wrt. of they PR represent that: "hey we just copied Canada why are you complaining".

fnordian_slip
4 replies
9h40m

Maybe I missed something as a European who doesn't always see what's happening over the great pond, but the sentence "hey we just copied Canada why are you complaining" confuses me.

Did I miss Canada embarking on a policy of euthanasia? I know that the treatment of native people had quite a few scandals in recent decades, did you want to allude to that?

Without wanting to make light of that situation, I think it is rather different in scale to what you propose.

akarlsten
2 replies
9h28m

Canada allows medically assisted suicide: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Euthanasia_in_Canada

fnordian_slip
1 replies
7h1m

Thank you. I have responded to you, since you were one minute earlier. I won't repeat the whole comment that I had written and lost due to my phone running out of battery, but still wanted to at least add part of it with thanks for the information.

This kind of euthanasia (voluntary, with a review board, like in Switzerland) is something I feel should be a human right, though I'm not sure about the intricacies of the Canadian system.

I think one should be very much aware of the extreme chasm between this and the kind of euthanasia committed in the early half of the last century in the third Reich, and not confuse them because of the common name. From the grandparent comment, I had assumed they meant to imply that Canada had implemented something closer to the latter.

dathinab
0 replies
1h8m

sure about the intricacies of the Canadian system.

It's not as bad as what I believe China might do if worst comes to worst.

But from what I have heard the Canadian system has issues, with cases of especially permanent sick+poor people being in some cases constantly "nudged" to say good by even if they still have a strong will to live. Through I'm not sure how wide spread such issues had been and if they where fixed.

The reason I mention it is because china would also claim it's fully free choice, then if that isn't enough start nudging and then if that isn't enough go further.

Lets just hope it won't happen.

red-iron-pine
0 replies
9h28m

canada legalized it, euthansia that is. first in i wanna say 2017? and then another law expanded it fairly recently, or rather removed some barriers.

blackoil
1 replies
9h8m

start a war to kill many of their young and mid aged single men

That would be stupid, one thing the regime is not. Easier is to allow immigration of brides from Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia. Also, they can simply promote mechanization of agriculture. Right now, ~20-30% population is in agriculture that can be reduced to 2-5%.

berserk1010
0 replies
6h30m

this regime, aka Xi Jing Ping's reign is pretty stupid. He has had failed projects after failed projects for 10 years now. Also, dictatorships don't care about unemployed young men, look at Putin, sending waves of unequipped untrained men to their death.

China already has human trafficking of women from Laos and Cambodia. Birth rate still dropping.

barrysteve
2 replies
12h33m

Porn and contraceptives did a lot of damage.

It used to be that deciding to conceive made parents get their child into schooling and a lifelong career. Instutions were built and maintainted to support inflow of children and stable corporations were kept alfoat by a growing populace.

Making conception optional for sex has knocked over most of the stability there was in the west and people are scrambling to replace it with electronics and authority.

Tack on top of that, these country wide changes were not made by local governments, but by factories and corporations gradually dragging in the tools to break our society. And immigration on top to plug the gaps.

Something's gone terribly wrong with the West and there's no weasling out of it. It's time to stand up.

toyg
0 replies
11h20m

> Instutions were built and maintainted to support inflow of children and stable corporations were kept alfoat by a growing populace.

It's absurd to attribute the failure of modern capitalism to demographic flows or contraception.

Western corporations were relatively stable only because the rate of technological disruption was lower and, more importantly, the rate of overall financialization of the economy was so much lower. Capital moved very slowly, and financial instruments were few, often strictly regulated. Most capital was in steady manufacturing and agriculture business, rather than in volatile service industries. That made for a view of the economy where businesses were an institutional part of society, with roles and responsibilities and connections to locality.

Once technological disruption and financialization accelerated, unshackled capital steamrolled society into doing what it's best for capital pretty much all the time, demographics be damned. Part of the push towards later and later parenthood is due to the increased specialization necessary to tech-intensive capital-fuelled businesses, requiring longer and longer training times and complete dedication for several years on top of that - all to earn unstable jobs that disappear very shortly, thanks to more and more automation.

Yes, something is broken in the West: the needs of capital have trumped the needs of people for two generations, and now we're paying the price for it. You won't fix this through demographic tinkering, but through societal and political change. In fact, increasing demographic pressure on Western societies, at this point, is courting disaster.

hector_vasquez
0 replies
9h33m

And immigration on top to plug the gaps.

And there it is. This narrative that immigration hasn't been a constant and deciding factor in the development of the West (and pretty much everywhere else) is so wild. Stability of an insular population is the absolute exception of history.

KaiserPro
2 replies
13h30m

The "west" and china have _very_ different demographic pressures.

For example china famously had(has?) the one child rule. This meant a deliberate shift in how children were raised (all your eggs in one basket)

Now the default is single-no-children and you have to make an explicit choice to marry (you used to be nudged into it by society) and to have kids, by stopping to use contraceptives and to do all the things that long time singles are used to do.

I suspect you probably want to look deeper into the causes of that more. Yes contraceptives have a role to play, but they are not automatic, they require a deliberate choice, sometimes daily (https://www.statista.com/statistics/573210/contraceptive-use... granted this is for the UK, and doesn't account for people not taking it. The point is that younger women are taking pills daily)

Why are people not having kids? the answers are more complex than you seem to be suggesting.

argiopetech
1 replies
9h31m

If you look at the historical birth rate through the 20th century (hard to find data before 1950, but not impossible), the birth rate hovered around 5 children/woman or 35 children/1000 population. These numbers drop immediately and precipitously starting in 1960, the year "the pill" became publicly available.

Lots of people, young and old, take pills every day. People forget and unwanted pregnancies still happen, but a) that's not suggestive that the pill doesn't work or that it isn't responsible for a significant drop in realized fertility (the birth rate data makes that clear), and, b) the medical advances and cultural shift the pill enabled (casual sex is okay, sex outside of marriage is okay, children outside of marriage still pretty undesirable for most people) also paved the path for emergency contraception and the widespread acceptance and availability of abortion (to the extent that we now end the lives of 73 million unborn per year - that's a top-20 country, by population, per year).

In summary, is it more complex than "the pill did it"? Yes, but not much more. Birth control (of all types) is responsible the bulk of the reduction in birth rate.

mlrtime
0 replies
9h8m

Agreed, from everything I've seen the catalyst for this [low birth rates] is birth control and women's rights. Both gave women choices [a good thing]. When they use these choices it creates large demographic shifts. Enough time has passed that 2-earner households are required for a similar QoL, which makes children more expensive.

leoedin
1 replies
10h19m

When I was little it was still married-with-children by default, probably at relatively young age, and people had to decide not to have children.

Don't ignore selection bias. When you're a kid, almost everyone you know is a child, and so almost every adult you know is a parent.

I don't know how old you are, but most of those societal changes - no need to marry and contraception - have been in place for decades. I'm in my early 30s and I wouldn't say staying single and not marrying is the "default" - yes, there's more people doing it, but I still know a lot of people who have coupled up and got married. I don't think I know anyone who's completely checked out of the idea of a relationship yet - the single people are still dating, often with the expressed desire of finding someone.

I have 2 kids, and the main reason people I talk to aren't considering a third is cost. Cost of an extra bedroom, cost of a larger car, incredibly high childcare costs - there's a very large real reduction in living standards that comes from going from 2 to 3. Compare that to my parents generation, where 3 or more siblings was the norm. I suspect a large part of falling birth rates isn't that loads more people are living child free lives, but that the people choosing to have kids are having fewer of them.

everforward
0 replies
9h40m

My feeling is that it's heavily friend-group or clique dependent, or potentially geography-dependent (metropolitan vs rural).

I'm also in my early 30s, but the majority of people I know are not married. I know about the same number of people who are polyamorous as married despite not running in those circles.

I know I'm an outlier because the stats don't hear anything close to that.

I will say that in the major metros, marriage still feels relatively uncommon. I think I've been to one wedding in several years, and it was a work acquaintance more than a friend (I was surprised to be invited, really). Most of the people I knew that were married were in their late forties and beyond.

I don't think I know anyone who's completely checked out of the idea of a relationship yet - the single people are still dating, often with the expressed desire of finding someone.

I think it's important to delineate between people who want a relationship and people who want to get married. Relationships can exist absent a marriage, and marriages can exist absent a relationship. Some people don't want to be single, but don't want to be married.

That's the demographic that I've seen growing. I don't see people pulling away from relationships so much as marriage. Marriage comes with so much baggage, and a lot of the traditions are based around historic assumptions that don't hold true anymore.

mrjin
9 replies
15h29m

I doubt that's going to help. The decades of property bubble has changed the mindset of the people. Just look at Japan, it's property bubble burst was decades ago, but till now, are there any signs of turnaround? Young people have enough trouble just to get a shelter and feed themselves, and now you want them to have kids which add more pressure onto what they are already struggling to coup with. How likely is that?

Drakim
6 replies
15h3m

Yeah, it's gonna be very hard to get the genie to go back into the bottle, people won't forget that real estate is very powerful for financial speculation, and that even if the bubble bursts again and again you have plenty of years with amazing returns.

At least the same hasn't happened with food and drinkable water yet.

Anotheroneagain
5 replies
13h48m

The problem gets deeper: This may sound insane, but I would argue that the productivity is way too high. There is too much stuff, which is too cheap, which makes it too hard to make money by actually producing anything. This it turn splits the economy into two groups: One that doesn't have money, live scrapping the bottom, and typically in debt. The other that does have money, with no good opportunities to invest, which causes bubbles.

rightbyte
2 replies
13h38m

Ye the competition is too high in the base and the profit taken by middle men.

However, I think covid changed that, where producers collectivly realized that if they just raise prices the middle men need to pay up.

Being stuck in a sector that operates "efficiently" sucks. You want guilds, like lawyers and doctors, or inefficiency, like the financial sector.

Anotheroneagain
1 replies
13h1m

No, not like that:

Evergrande is in the first group here, fruitlessly producing something of no real value, as there is too much of it.

The second group are those who invested in Evergrande itself, or the housing it built.

It sucks for everyone.

It sucks for Evergrande, as sooner or later it had to go bankrupt.

It sucks for those who invested in the housing, as it's clear that if they actually tried to sell or rent out the housing they would end up with some paltry sum.

It sucks for those who invested in Evergrande, as they're going to lose money.

It suck ls for those who can't afford a place to live because of the inflated prices.

I think there are really no winners here. No middlemen filling their pockets. It was a loss for everyone.

petesergeant
0 replies
11h41m

I think there are really no winners here

As with any bubble, the winners are the people who cashed out at the right time

jijijijij
0 replies
7h31m

Don't worry, the unfortunate side of the "split" could just start a side-hustle! Maybe another podcast, or OnlyFans account. Everyone has a story to sell, and if not, just make it up! "Content creation" to create need for a marketing-made spontaneously mass-produced something, anything, as parasitic load on dopaminergic parasocial relationships. See? Growth finds a way! Super healthy, totally not an indicator of things getting catastrophically unbalanced.

Already, at capacity attention, over capacity exploitation. Infrastructure debts, planetary debts #YOLO

I wonder, when we're finally getting AI enhanced productivity end to end, will we realize how deep we dug ourselves in?

TheOtherHobbes
0 replies
8h33m

The wrong kind of productivity is too high. Too much consumer crap, much of it disposable. Not enough no-compromise blue sky R&D and research into physics fundamentals.

xwolfi
0 replies
9h20m

But Japan has a population crumble, a long LONG tradition of home price devaluation (earthquakes destroy everything, why build super high quality stuff and why maintain, after 10 years your protection is more fragile or obsolete) and prices are extremely low.

In China, they had a speculative bubble sure, but what s gonna kill the market is that in 20 years a lot less young people will exist to even buy the houses, like in Japan.

badpun
0 replies
4h16m

People live incomparably harder lives in Nigeria than in Japan, and yet they have plenty of children. It's about values, not circumstances.

ilikerashers
5 replies
13h48m

I wonder how much of the world's growth is squeezed by these kinds of inefficiencies.

Property speculation keeps prices high, and people paying off mortgages in dead-end jobs. Education costs force parents into difficult decisions to move out of HCOL areas where they likely have higher-value jobs. Energy and Water costs spike while providing no societal benefit.

The West is obsessed with keeping these in place, the rising East seems better placed to change economic inefficiencies. Not sure how it'll play out but I feel like Western society is being pillaged by the PE crowd who can take advantage of the above.

MiguelX413
2 replies
13h32m

What does PE mean?

SideQuark
0 replies
13h16m

Private Equity

Kbelicius
0 replies
13h27m

Probably Price-earning ratio (share price/earning per share)

throwaway4aday
0 replies
9h15m

How is the East better positioned when this article is about a massive failure due to property speculation? It just took a different and exaggerated form in China due to the rightly perceived shakiness of Chinese stocks and the limitations on land and property ownership. If this development cements in the minds of the Chinese populace that buying an extra apartment as an investment is no longer a safe place to store their money then who knows what's going to happen next. If you can't keep your money in stocks and you can't keep it in real estate then how do you invest for your future? This is an even more pressing question due to their rapidly aging populace with the prospect of little to no support from their children and non-existent grand-children.

The real-estate market in the West may be bonkers but at least someone in their prime earning years can invest in stocks if they can't purchase a home. That has its own risks but with a little knowledge you can mitigate them and with patience you can wait them out and even benefit from them.

red-iron-pine
0 replies
9h12m

the rising East seems better placed to change economic inefficiencies

lol wut? china changing ineffeiciencies? this must be winnie the poo propaganda. china is corrupt as all hell and much of their building material is of dubious and shady quality. japan and korea are stagnating, and much of SEA is still struggling to modernize and combat their own structural inefficiencies.

PE is a cancer, but I'd be curious to know how much of a stake foreign firms have in those orgs.

tnel77
0 replies
9h11m

Can you elaborate on the crackdown/reforms on private education?

dathinab
6 replies
12h20m

affordable housing is in the interest of everybody except property developers.

it is, but it's also complicated as the problems are quite a bit different in China then in the US

the reason there was a bubble in China was because they sold (barely) affordable (apartment owned, not rented) housing to a huge amount of people while not producing it. Like they financed it similar to a snowball system. Group B buys housing but pays for the housing bought by Group A then Group C pays for Group B etc. But at some point it fell apart and people realized the housing they should have gotten "soon" isn't being build (or stuck in a partial state) and the company has no money anymore. (Kind oversimplifying the whole thing.)

To top that off there are (state build) ghost cities which have cheap appartments and acceptable building build quality, the problem is there is nothing there, no jobs(!), no supermarket, bus, people, "anything", if you are unlucky even electricity might be cut of in parts of it, (also I guess for rent not apartment ownership). (But there are also enough examples of western media reporting about ghost cities messed up because turns out just a few years later it wasn't a ghost city anymore.)

And to make that worse it's not just Evergrande. It outside of the areas with a lot of central government focus there where many cases of houses building companies which had money issues trying to pretend everything is fine by cheeping out on building cost to a point where houses build that way are basically unusable. Through from the outside it looked like there is still progress. Issue with that is, it is really hard to guess how bad it is, pro-china media most times doesn't mention it and if it says it's a rare exception and/or videos are fake, anti-china media says it's bad to a point it's everywhere, and you find little in between. And both sides are known to lie a lot.

dpflan
4 replies
10h1m

Very curious how these opportunities for housing were marketed to the masses? These ghost cities you describe, I can see how the new housing can be presented as a life-changing opportunity, with nice images/videos but the reality is...a ghost town, facade of a city.

citrusybread
2 replies
6h35m

China is still urbanizing rapidly. Just like GP said, it won't be a ghost city for long. It depends though on how long the investor can hold out, and whether or not the new city is doomed from the start.

CCP planning is just different. TBD if it's doomed to fail like the Soviet Union, or if it will make it through a crisis like this. It's also hard to tell what will ultimately call a crisis; just thinking back to 2008, a lot of the story is only figured out in retrospect (eg how critical Bear Stearns was).

berserk1010
1 replies
6h27m

China is still urbanizing rapidly.

Many things wrong with that statement. There is a reverse migration from cities back to countryside, since the wages in the city have fallen, jobs have disappeared, rent is still expensive, and it's harder to justify living in the city when you can only save a few hundred dollars a year from a job.

Thus, empty retail stores in major tier 1 cities. Empty apartments in Dongguan and Shenzhen. Small crowds at malls.

dathinab
0 replies
1h20m

From what I heard that is a somewhat "recent" trend while most ghost city cases I heard of outdate that trend by month potential over a year.

I think a lot of people living in the west without ties to china haven't realized that there are many huge but sometimes subtle changes in China in the last view years.

rfwhyte
0 replies
7h19m

They are marketed as investments, not housing. The majority of people buying these "Homes" never intended for themselves or anyone else for that matter, to live in them in the first place.

throwaway4aday
0 replies
9h12m

Ghost cities are a good example of how simply building housing is not a perfect solution. If the housing is somewhere where people don't want to be then it is worthless and also useless since no one can make use of it if they can't make a living there.

misja111
2 replies
14h27m

In the long term, the bursting of China's property bubble is probably good news, affordable housing is in the interest of everybody except property developers.

The effect of China's property bubble was an oversupply of houses, leading to unnaturally low property prices. The long term effect will be a consolidation in the property branch, leading to less supply and higher property prices.

Whether this is good or bad I don't know, but it certainly will not lead to more affordable housing than right now.

petesergeant
1 replies
11h38m

Was there an oversupply in actually built properties in places people want to live? My understanding is that property prices in major cities are still massively unaffordable

tsss
0 replies
10h22m

What does it matter? All the people who bought apartments in the middle of nowhere as an investment now want to buy the apartments in real cities => thus more demand.

kylebenzle
2 replies
16h30m

Tether is by far the largest counterfeiter of USD and has already been shown to be backed largely by nothing.

The introduction of Tether coincided with the hijacking of the Bitcoin GitHub repo by the for profit company Blockstream.

Blockstream's Samson Mow had close ties with Tether and El Salvador dictatorial President who made Bitcoin a national currency on exchange for billions of dollars of free Tether dollars.

Tether is not and does not need to be backed by anything other than US intelligence agencies. There is no proof of this other than the fact that the larger USD counterfeiter is allowed to exist and control the price of the hijacked Bitcoin chain with the ticker, BTC.

bouncycastle
0 replies
14h54m

I don't like Tether myself, but it's definitely not counterfeiting. To counterfeit something, you need to pass it off as the real thing. Tether is not the real USD, it's just a currency made to be worth around the same amount as a dollar, and the value often hovers around $1, but it's not always $1.

Another real world example is the Hong Kong Dollar. Just because it's pegged to the USD, does not mean it's counterfeit.

RustyRussell
0 replies
15h21m

This is ridiculous, sorry. The NY AG investigation showed Tether was actually mostly backed at the time (surprising me, too!)

And the Blockstream FUD is tired (I am the longest serving technical employee at Blockstream)

yreg
1 replies
18h38m

In the long term, the bursting of Tether is probably…

1over137
0 replies
18h10m

and in the short term too!

shortrounddev2
0 replies
9h57m

affordable housing is in the interest of everybody except property developers.

Property developers are the answer to affordable housing. We cannot have affordable housing without building millions of new housing units. It's the home OWNERS who are dragging their feet to try to artificially inflate their property values

motbus3
0 replies
14h41m

This is true. The (ironic) lack of control of property holding to sell moronic. Well, technically it is the lobby industry which helps no citizen when they push back for measures that avoid accumulation of properties causing the market to concentrate loads of money on real state for obvious reasons.

In my city, they tried to implement taxes for those who own more than two properties and it would be more expensive for properties that had no one living. The result is that the proposal was quietly removed from the voting in a Friday night before a weekend followed by long holidays.

karmasimida
0 replies
15h30m

domino effect of other property developers defaulting

It has already happened. Evergrande and Countrygarden, two of the biggest developers both defaulted.

The insolvency of Chinese property sector is old news.

blueyes
0 replies
17h18m

When large groups of assets and securities go to zero, it always has a a ripple effect on markets across many other assets. That was the story of Bear and Lehman in 2008-9.

threeseed
58 replies
1d3h

This is only the Hong Kong business.

Which is why it hasn't had the impact you would expect.

loeg
48 replies
1d3h

The Hong Kong business is the business.

kayodelycaon
46 replies
1d3h

CNN has quotes to the contrary. Most of their Chinese assets are owned by Hengda Real Estate Group, which is legally independent.

https://www.cnn.com/2024/01/29/business/evergrande-ordered-t...

loeg
45 replies
1d2h

Interesting. It's unclear how you liquidate the parent company without liquidating subsidiaries (who is going to buy Hengda RE?) and it seems like legally the HK decision should be binding:

Hong Kong and the mainland city of Shenzhen — where Evergrande is based — have a mutual insolvency recognition agreement, but it’s “effectively inoperative”

But China basically ignores HK in this.

i_am_jl
37 replies
1d2h

I'm very naive about all of this, can I ask what this means?

Evergrande has been ordered to liquidate, on paper this means that the Chinese subsidiary Hengda must also liquidate, but China's just... not going to liquidate Hengda? So instead of Evergrande's creditors dividing up Evergrande+Hengda's assets only Evergrande's assets are going to be liquidated? If that's right, how does that work? Does Hengda get bought and the purchase price distributed to creditors? Does China just tell Evergrande's creditors "too bad"?

chasd00
17 replies
1d2h

Does China just tell Evergrande's creditors "too bad"?

that sounds inline with standard operating procedures.

miohtama
16 replies
1d

It also means that foreign direct investments to China will dry up. However they’d likely dry up any case due to US vs. China trade war.

loeg
14 replies
23h52m

A little bit, maybe, but probably not entirely. The joke is that debt investors have no memory. For example, Argentina has defaulted many times in recent memory but was still able to market a 100-year bond in 2017 (which it has already defaulted on).

nradov
5 replies
20h11m

This is more a sign that the bond rating process remains broken despite some superficial reforms after the 2008 financial crisis. The major rating agencies gave that Argentine bond a B rating which allows many institutional investors to buy, despite the reality that it's obviously garbage. Then when the next default hits the fund managers can blame their losses on the rating agencies. Nothing changes.

fspeech
2 replies
17h56m

In what sense did the rating agencies do a terrible job here? First B is a junk rating, not investment grade. Secondly if you get paid 7.9% for six years plus a market price of 30 cents on the dollar you get back more than 75 cents on the dollar, which would have been comparable to the performance of US 30 year Treasury issued around the same time. People do realize that if the principal is not paid back then whether there is one year or 90 years left on the bond term is irrelevant, right? In other words if you suspect the default risk is high you might as well buy the 100 year instead of the 10 year to get compensated by the higher premium.

harpiaharpyja
1 replies
16h24m

Why would anyone put in a dollar to get 75 cents back?

fspeech
0 replies
6h11m

Because there's no gain without risk? If it were riskless it would not have paid 5 percentage points higher than US Treasury.

photonbeam
1 replies
19h2m

Can anyone start a ratings agency? Or is it special somehow?

nradov
0 replies
18h39m

Rating agencies have to comply with the SEC registration rules. There are currently 10, but only 3 dominate the market for large bond issues. In theory anyone could start a new one but in practice it would be difficult. The most recent company to obtain registration was Demotech which did it in 2022 but the company had been around since 1985.

https://www.sec.gov/about/divisions-offices/office-credit-ra...

berserk1010
4 replies
23h36m

miohtama is actually correct.

Foreign investors have snatched back nearly 90% of the money they put into Chinese stocks this year (2023)

https://markets.businessinsider.com/news/stocks/china-econom...

Foreign investment in China turns negative for first time

https://asia.nikkei.com/Economy/Foreign-investment-in-China-...

hmm37
2 replies
22h2m

Equities are different from bonds. Bonds are being snapped up by a lot of foreign investors.

berserk1010
1 replies
21h38m

Chinese equities suffered a US$3.4 billion outflow from non-resident portfolios in the last month of 2023, while Chinese bonds only had a marginal US$189 million inflow for the same month, according to preliminary data from the Institute of International Finance (IIF) released on Thursday.

https://www.scmp.com/economy/china-economy/article/3248078/c...

That said, once foreign bond buyers realize how much foreign creditors get back from the Evergrande debt (0 cents on the dollar), pretty sure foreign bond purchases will drop fast

hmm37
0 replies
21h8m

There most be different data sets or different measurements, or categories of bonds being used. E.g. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-01-16/china-bon...

"Global investors raised their holdings of Chinese bonds for a fourth straight month, capitalizing on a lucrative currency swap strategy to continue their gradual return to the world’s second-biggest debt market.

They bought 181 billion yuan ($25 billion) of local yuan bonds on a net basis in the country’s main interbank market in December, taking their total holdings to the highest since April 2022, show Bloomberg calculations based on clearing house data."

All of this is besides the point that foreigners are buying China's bonds, as @loeg has stated. They are essentially swapping out riskier equities for the safety of bonds which is by and large what is often taught to do when the economy isn't booming, only to switch back into equities when the downward cycle is over.

anon-sre-srm
0 replies
13h1m

It's curious why any FDI happened, except small amounts of speculative investment. Property rights in China have always been highly precarious. It's a huge economy but the game is arbitrary and rigged.

gottorf
1 replies
20h38m

Wow, I had no idea. There are very few entities in the world whose 100-year bonds I would entertain (maybe Switzerland?), and Argentina would certainly be near the bottom. I can't believe they sold two and three-quarter billion dollars'[0] worth!

[0]: https://www.cnbc.com/2017/06/20/argentina-sees-strong-demand...

asah
0 replies
19h28m

The sell size has all sorts of tricks, including bundling these bonds with better looking ones.

2.75B is 0.002% of the $133T worldwide bond market.

enaaem
0 replies
12h3m

Creditors lose money all the time. It’s priced in the interest rate. They can still win in the long run with a diverse large portfolio.

thriftwy
0 replies
1d

That's the US, when they see money to be made in next quarter they go for it regardless. Not going to dry up.

kube-system
12 replies
1d2h

Does China just tell Evergrande's creditors "too bad"?

In a broad sense, that's how bankruptcy works in the west too. The government has rules for who gets paid first, and everyone else is SOL.

loeg
9 replies
1d1h

Yeah but in the west it is based on claim seniority rather than like, hose foreign creditors first.

kube-system
5 replies
1d1h

No, in the US, claims are paid out based on the type of debt, outlined in the Absolute Priority Rule.

loeg
3 replies
23h51m

We are talking about the same concept but with different terminology. Not "No, ...".

kube-system
2 replies
22h38m

Maybe we are, but I'm not really sure 'seniority' is a great word to describe it. The term usually implies ranking due to duration. But it's really just a ranking prescribed by law. Often the shortest term lenders who are facilitating the bankruptcy process are first!

AlbertCory
1 replies
20h42m

"senior" is a term of art, and entirely appropriate:

https://www.investopedia.com/terms/s/seniordebt.asp

kube-system
0 replies
20h35m

I stand corrected, thanks.

nradov
0 replies
19h21m

Except when it's politically advantageous to change the rules. During the GM bankruptcy and bailout in 2009, President Obama gave his supporters in the UAW a sweetheart deal which allowed them to recover more than the other unsecured creditors. This set a terrible precedent and undermined the rule of law.

gerdesj
0 replies
23h10m

In the UK, its basically HMRC first, then banks/building societies. If there is anything left, everyone else gets a share.

The last one my company dealt with, we got about 10% of our exposure back. So we got £1,000 instead of the £10,000 that was owed. We then got to write that off as a loss.

This monster is in a different league to anything I've dealt with but the principles here would largely be the same but with less transparency and more money wandering off for a chat with shady characters. I suspect that the rules I might follow may be joined by some rather more complicated ones, when the sums involved are large enough and the corporate structures are complicated enough.

faeriechangling
0 replies
1d1h

Which is why the west has been getting taken for a ride for years.

blitzar
0 replies
15h55m

* unless they bail out the company, and its shareholders, with billions in taxpayer subsidies

bozhark
1 replies
1d1h

Depends on what chapter is filled and approved

kube-system
0 replies
1d1h

Discharge can happen under both 7 and 11 which are the most common in the US. Chapter 7 is the equivalent of what is being discussed in this particular case.

colechristensen
3 replies
1d2h

From CNN:

the implications for the company’s vast business in mainland China are unclear.

Hong Kong and the mainland city of Shenzhen — where Evergrande is based — have a mutual insolvency recognition agreement, but it’s “effectively inoperative” and courts in the city are “extremely unlikely” to recognize the offshore liquidator, Silvers said.

What we have here is a complex set of semi-international legal issues on the other side of the world. I don't trust HN commentary on the subject. It seems very undecided for now and will be a sticky situation for China, Hong Kong, and foreign investors.

Animats
1 replies
1d

South China Morning Post is trying to figure it out.[1] "A Hong Kong court on January 29 ordered the liquidation of China’s property giant Evergrande, but the firm said it would continue to operate in a case that has become a symbol of the nation’s deepening economic woes." "Given that most of the company’s assets are onshore, we do not think that offshore bondholders would receive substantial recovery proceeds from the liquidation. In addition, it is unclear whether the Hong Kong court’s liquidation order could be enforced onshore; there has been some mutual recognition of bankruptcy proceedings between Hong Kong and mainland courts, but the enforcement is difficult in practice." Reads like their reporter called up the usual suspects for comments.

There's nothing at all about Evergrande in China Daily, which means there's no official position yet.

[1] https://www.scmp.com/business/china-business/article/3250215...

sanxiyn
0 replies
16h52m

I am also trying to figure this out. I created a prediction market at Manifold whether a mainland Chinese court will recognize Hong Kong-appointed liquidator. Please make your bets and comments if you have insight!

https://manifold.markets/SanghyeonSeo/will-hong-kongappointe...

miohtama
0 replies
1d

China is not a rule of law country. It really does not matter what laws or treaties say, as Xi can just snap fingers and the law will be different.

xwolfi
0 replies
9h15m

In HK we made a deal with China so that our judicial orders regarding Evergrande are considered in their jurisdiction. For now we're waiting to see.

KaiserPro
0 replies
13h27m

Liquidate doesn't mean destroy, it means finding assets of value, dividing them up if that gets better value, and selling them to pay off as much debt as possible.

if Hengda is a going concern by it's self, then it might be sold off to a bunch of people to raise cash, or shares of it given to creditors to sell off them selves.

but then there is the concept of senior and junior debtors, and the like.

vidarh
2 replies
1d2h

Depends on how they operate. Selling subsidiaries as going concerns or handing their shares to creditors of the parent are often options.

It's in no way a given that a subsidiary is insolvent just because the parent is.

This isn't unusual. E.g. when Commodore went bankrupt several subsidiaries continued to operate as long as they had stock, and the UK subsidiary even tried to organize a buyout of its parent.

loeg
1 replies
23h47m

It's in no way a given that a subsidiary is insolvent just because the parent is.

In general, sure, but in this case, no. The subsidiary has, at most, $260B of assets against $275B of debt. It's insolvent.

vidarh
0 replies
15h50m

Even then, depending on jurisdiction (and I have no idea about the specifics in China) balance sheet insolvency may or may not be sufficient for bankruptcy.

E.g. in particular in situations where there is any way to justify that they will not become cash flow insolvent. If they can somehow make a reasonable case that their assets will appreciate in value faster than their debts will come due. Thought it might put additional constraints on their spending.

Note that I'm not arguing that they're a going concern - I have no idea, but given they're presumably dependent on Chinese property prices for their assets valuation it does sound dicey - just how it might be possible for them to justify not winding up the subsidiary.

onlyrealcuzzo
1 replies
1d2h

HK is where the foreign debt is.

This is freeing the Chinese business of its obligations of $25B in foreign debt.

Presumably that makes for a better business.

Who knows. Evergrande could easily be worth less than -$25B. No one wants to buy a business worth negative money. But it's definitely worth less negative money now.

cm2187
0 replies
23h15m

If evergrande is the parent company, I don't think a restructuring of its own debt affects the debt of its subs, so the chinese sub would still be liable for the funding it borrowed from the parent unless it is itself restructured.

If you borrow money from a bank and that bank goes bust, you still owe the full balance based on the initially agreed repayment schedule, it is just that your loan is now an asset contributing to the recovery of the bank's own creditors.

cm2187
0 replies
23h19m

If the subsidiary is performing (not saying it is the case here), it's unclear to me how you could even force its liquidation. Financially, shits fly upward, not downward. Losses will contaminate the parent company not the child companies (unless the sub has a structural dependency on the parent). You may have to sell the sub at a heavy discount, which means less recovery for your debt holders. But you would get sued by the debt holders or any minority interest of the sub if you tried to liquidate a healthy sub.

arghwhat
0 replies
23h16m

A subsidiary is just an asset like any other. When liquidating company, it's assets are split between creditors to pay back the debt.

Granted, it's very weird to have the parent die. Normally you have subsidiaries to isolate risk, and even if the problem is the parent I imagine you'd cool the books to shift the debt to a sarificial limited liability subsidiary that can go bankrupt so the business can continue.

xwolfi
0 replies
9h17m

No it's the financial holding, they fuck the investors and that s it: they can ignore it as long the 3 city judges in China let them (but everyone will run out of patience eventually: nothing can save this dead horse).

The_Colonel
8 replies
1d3h

This reddit comment explains this quite well: https://old.reddit.com/r/Economics/comments/1adnx32/evergran...

HK is sort of what NY is to the US. It is a peripheral region with some minor degree of autonomy but because it just so happens to house the Chinese version of Wall Street this means it’s judiciary is a little bit special when it comes to dealing with insolvency and other corporate issues.

This means that it very likely means liquidation in China as well.

akeck
2 replies
1d2h

Technically, I think replacing NY with Delaware may be a better comparison - specifically with respect to the Delaware Court of Chancery in which most large US companies litigate business issues.

tsunamifury
1 replies
1d1h

Even more like City of London vs England.

andy_ppp
0 replies
17h30m

Not really, if a company goes bankrupt in the City it is bankrupt. There’s no distinction, where’s as here most people believe the Chinese entity will continue to operate as a separate company.

Ericson2314
2 replies
1d2h

Comparing HK to NYC is very reductive lol.

Though it's kinda funny to imagine the Dutch held onto NYC until the 1990s after which there was some sort of unification process.

andruby
1 replies
1d2h

In 1664, the English took over New Amsterdam and renamed it New York after the Duke of York (later James II & VII).

That’s a good 300 years before 1990 :)

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Amsterdam

dmoy
0 replies
1d1h

GP is talking about an imaginary hypothetical situation in which NYC would be dutch held until the 1990s, not the real-world timeline

sanxiyn
0 replies
13h59m

I have looked at the comment and this person is clueless. What matters here is jurisdiction, and Hong Kong is certainly a different jurisdiction. Political independence of Hong Kong is immaterial.

If you want some actual information I recommend "Cross-Border Insolvency between Chinese Mainland and Hong Kong: The Past, the Present, and the Future" (2022). https://ssrn.com/abstract=4100844

hiddencost
0 replies
1d2h

If DC took NYC by force.

berserk1010
48 replies
1d3h

A couple of things to note:

1.) Why did it take Evergrande 3 years to liquidate? In western countries, liquidation happens in a few months. One should note that Evergrande did not get that big by itself; obviously it had the support of CCP elites to secure huge bank loans. Therefore, when it went bankrupt, the delay was to allow these elites to pull money/liquidable assets out of Evergrande. Thus after 3 years, Evergrande probably has pretty bad mark-to-fantasy assets left. This bodes very ill for creditors. Foreign creditors account only for $25B of the $300B liabilities for Evergrande. https://apnews.com/article/china-evergrande-property-liquida...

2.) This event implies that most of the Chinese real estate developers are bankrupt/insolvent. excluding for Li Ka Shing's portfolio most likely.

3.) Evergrande's assets are mostly comprised of lands in China. This means, most of the lands will get returned to local governments, which will increase land inventory massively. This will accelerate the real estate price decline in all parts of China, on top of the 30-40% drop we're seeing in Tier 1 cities, on top of the 50-60% drop we're seeing in non-Tier 1 cities.

4.) What does this mean for China's 3 pillars of economic engine (real estate, consumer spending, export)? real estate comprises of 25-30% of Chinese economy, so the economy will be forced to mark to reality these assets, and will take a huge hit. Consumer spending is tied to real estate engine, since most of the citizens' wealth is in real estate. Thus we are seeing consumer spending decline and downgrade substitution patterns. Case in point: recent $1 McDonald burger deal was causing shortages in China. Haidilao has been focused on a cheaper version of their hot pot, which costs $10. $1 bread shops are spreading across China.

5.) If real estate and consumer spending is crashing, then China can only rely on export, and thus the trend of dumping abroad will continue. Especially cars and solar. Europe is in the middle of looking into applying tariffs to Chinese EVs. US is already set with heavy tariffs on Chinese EVs. Note that Chinese export to US and Europe has dropped 10% and 20% y/y.

EDIT: also coincidently, Chinese authorities just banned short selling https://www.reuters.com/world/china/china-securities-regulat.... This is following the Chinese stock market decline of 11% this year. and 3 year cumulative decline.

onlyrealcuzzo
25 replies
1d3h

This bodes very ill for creditors. Foreign creditors account only for $25B of the $300B liabilities for Evergrande.

I'm sorry - but any foreigner who lent Evergrande money thinking this wasn't a huge risk is a moron.

This will accelerate the real estate price decline in all parts of China, on top of the 30-40% drop we're seeing in Tier 1 cities, on top of the 50-60% drop we're seeing in non-Tier 1 cities.

According to "official" sources - property prices aren't even down 5%. Where are you seeing that they're down 30-40% in Tier 1 cities?

It would take the median couple >7 years saving 100% of post-tax income to afford a downpayment on the median 100 m^2 condo. If you assume even 3% interest - thereafter - the monthly payment would be >80% of their COMBINED post-tax income.

China's property prices have astounded me since 2000 - and yet they continued to rocket higher for a solid two decades.

People are NUTS in the US at Price to Income levels of 4:1 - when this is some of the lowest Price to Income for housing in the world. We consider places like Vancouver and London and Sydney ludicrous bubbles - and yet they are usually below 10:1. China was at 11:1 in 2000 and climbed to 17:1 by 2020: https://lipperalpha.refinitiv.com/2020/06/chart-of-the-week-... Places like Shanghai have ratios of 38:1 and higher.

HWR_14
10 replies
1d2h

The foreigners probably loaned money to Evergrande a long time ago, before the issues started appearing.

onlyrealcuzzo
9 replies
1d2h

The issues were apparent since 2000.

The vast majority of Evergrande's outstanding foreign debt is from >2012.

BlackRock, HSBC, and UBS poured in about $3B of the $25B in 2021 alone...

And, I'm sorry - if you didn't see a risk doing that in 2021 - you're gonna lose all your money sooner or later.

In BlackRock's case - it was primarily for 401k-ers for exposure to Chinese bonds. I think the US should've made it illegal - and probably will soon - to offer a product like that.

Why anyone in the US would want exposure to Chinese bonds that don't even have good yields for "diversity" is incredible. Up next - Russian and Venezuelan 100-year bonds at 0% interest!

thriftwy
6 replies
1d

What's wrong with Russian bonds? That land is unlikely to be going away, may contain even more mineral wealth and is climate change resistant.

hollerith
2 replies
20h39m

The Kremlin has been saying that if the $300 billion worth of Russian Central Bank assets that were frozen in response to the invasion of Ukraine are confiscated (e.g., to give them to Ukraine), the Kremlin is going to respond by confiscating assets in Russia held by Westerners.

thriftwy
0 replies
14h59m

But that's not a problem with Russia - that's the West not honoring their IOU. Also not problem for everybody else.

The West is a minority of the Earth now, including financially.

petre
0 replies
16h12m

Westeners who were dumb enough to move their assets into Russia in order to evade taxes. Like Depardieu, who recently got UAE citizenship.

photonbeam
0 replies
17h58m

Not if climate change triggers a new ice age :)

Though I guess that bond prices would be meaningless for most at that point

ffgjgf1
0 replies
15h37m

What does that have to with bonds the government might refuse to pay out (or western governments might ban you from receiving payments even if they don’t)?

dgellow
0 replies
22h29m

Aren’t bonds linked to governments, not land? Russia the country can default.

seanmcdirmid
0 replies
1d1h

2012 was the year that Andrew Left publicized why he was shorting Evergrande stock, which he got banned for in 2016. I would say 2010 was when Evergrande started popping up in the news as possibly insolvent, 2000 is too early.

djbusby
0 replies
1d2h

If only someone had warned us!

berserk1010
6 replies
1d2h

cursory searches on western media reviews shows 20%, 25%, 30%.

https://medium.com/alpha-beta-blog/even-beijing-home-prices-...

https://fortune.com/2023/08/17/china-home-sales-worse-than-o...

https://sccei.fsi.stanford.edu/china-briefs/tier-3-cities-ho...

My sources are from real estate agents in China.

Not sure why anyone would actually trust official numbers from China. China still claimed 5% gdp growth last year. pretty laughable.

Also, you can just watch what multinationals are doing. They have retail numbers from their Chinese stores. And it's pretty clear Japanese and Taiwanese and South Korean and American and European multinationals are all withdrawing.

onlyrealcuzzo
5 replies
1d2h

A Medium post isn't a source.

Your fortune article says PRICES are only down 2.4% (roughly the "official" stats).

Your other article is about T3 cities.

berserk1010
4 replies
1d2h

It's all in the articles

"Existing homes near Alibaba Group Holding Ltd.’s headquarters in Hangzhou have dropped about 25% from late 2021 highs, according to local agents."

"Even as of March, before a fresh slowdown, more than half of tier-2 and tier-3 cities saw existing-home prices fall more than 15% from peaks,"

"residential housing prices in tier 3 cities dropped by nearly 20%."

EDIT: Again, to get the real numbers, you need to have access to Chinese real estate agents. And these folks aren't going to be posting articles for everyone to read. Or if they post a video in anger, it will get taken down.

onlyrealcuzzo
3 replies
1d2h

A small section of a New Tier 1 city is not indicative of an entire T1 city.

seanmcdirmid
2 replies
1d1h

Is HZ really considered a T1 city now? It is more like a rich T2 city.

onlyrealcuzzo
1 replies
1d1h

According to Wikipedia it is a "New Tier 1" city. T1 is still just Shanghai, Beijing and Shenzhen/Guangzhou.

seanmcdirmid
0 replies
21h12m

I guess by money it could be, so could other cities in jiangsu and zhejiang that are China’s richest provinces.

brianwawok
2 replies
1d2h

Your math just says the median person doesn’t buy a condo. If only the top 10% can afford them, that’s still a huge pool of people.

Pretty sure median US income can’t afford a condo in NYC.

onlyrealcuzzo
1 replies
1d2h

At the end of the day - prices need to be supported by incomes (buyers or renters) or magic beans.

lmm
0 replies
21h58m

Sure. But the median Chinese income tells you very little about the distribution of Chinese incomes.

deadfoxygrandpa
1 replies
19h46m

i live in shenzhen and i would love it if prices dropped 30-40%. i'd buy an apartment immediately lol. i've been checking real estate prices every once and a while for about 5 years now ready to buy if something shows up at a good price in an area i want to live in

the reality so far is that prices have pretty much stayed flat for the past 4-5 years. there hasnt been any significant fall anywhere within like 1 hour of me in shenzhen

berserk1010
0 replies
19h24m

I guess you weren't looking hard enough.

Pre-owned housing prices in Shenzhen fell by nearly half from their peak in 2020 after holding up over the past two years of plunging new-home values amid slumping demand and a liquidity crunch for developers.

https://www.caixinglobal.com/2023-08-25/shenzhen-existing-ho...

Meanwhile, according to Leyoujia store transaction data, second-hand housing prices in Shenzhen in the fourth quarter of 2023 were around 65,000 yuan per square meter, down 12% from 2022, and 22% lower than the all-time high in the first quarter of 2021. The transaction prices in some areas and real estate have already returned to 2018, and the drop compared to the highest point was as high as 30% to 40%.

https://news.futunn.com/en/post/36099590?level=1&data_ticket...

wesapien
0 replies
21h25m

Nice stats but people want housing condition to improve not degenerate to other countries lows. Should we thank our western overlords for sparing us from those conditions? No.

MrPatan
0 replies
1d2h

any foreigner who lent Evergrande money thinking this wasn't a huge risk is a moron.

Or they are very smart while investing your money. Check your country's pension fund, see who manages it and what they invest in. Or better yet, don't.

datadrivenangel
7 replies
1d3h

It will be very interesting to see how the CCP navigates this coming recession.

berserk1010
5 replies
1d3h

I would call it a Great Depression https://www.forbes.com/sites/miltonezrati/2024/01/22/chinas-.... And the depression probably started in 2021 or 2022.

bigbillheck
4 replies
1d2h

And the depression probably started in 2021 or 2022.

GDP is generally a bogus metric but it's an odd kind of depression that has a 5% growth in it.

onlyrealcuzzo
0 replies
1d2h

You can easily get 5% growth and worse living standards.

Expand your balance sheet to pay everyone to dig a hole.

GDP goes up.

As long as you ignore debt, GDP doesn't really mean anything.

Look at China's debt.

ffgjgf1
0 replies
15h30m

odd kind of depression

Not so much if you compare it to the original “Great Depression” https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_Depression

Of course assuming that 5% even means anything. Look up the Soviet official growth figures from the late 70s and 80s

enaaem
0 replies
12h59m

Li Keqiang, China’s former premier, doesn’t even look at gdp. It’s for ‘reference only’.

https://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE6B527D/

MrPatan
0 replies
1d2h

Is that 5% growth? Or is that a piece of paper with a number "5" in it? There is a difference.

chasd00
0 replies
1d2h

my guess is the CCP will declare it a mild economic correction and anyone saying otherwise will be jailed.

NicoJuicy
7 replies
1d3h

Some insights I didn't knew/consider, especially 2 and 3.

Can I ask the source of how you gained those insights?

Interesting to note: they have higher debt levels than the US ( GDP wise). If GDP would go down, that would mean a vicious circle and they wouldn't be able to "fund" their way out with low risk.

Which seems to indicate a lot of advantages to fiddle with the GDP growth numbers and explains limiting access to economic statistics: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-08-16/china-is-...

berserk1010
6 replies
1d3h

You would have to know mandarin (to read through government economic reports), and have access to Douyin videos. And these videos get taken down by the authorities fairly quickly

yorwba
5 replies
1d2h

There's probably a dozen people reading this thread who know enough Mandarin to handle a few short Douyin videos if you could provide us with links.

Though as a platform it lends itself well to amplifying extreme claims backed by speculation that play into people's fears, so unless the accounts in question have a history of well-sourced factual reporting, I'd be rather skeptical.

berserk1010
4 replies
1d2h

I'll paste one sample, it's safer

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7、祥生,浙江房企,负债规模约1500亿,2022年3月,1200万美元利息违约,宣告暴雷。

8、大发,上海房企,负债规模约300亿,2022年3月2228万元美元债利息无法偿还,宣告暴雷。

9、禹洲,闽系房企,负债规模约900亿,2022年3月美元债利息2125万美元违约,宣告暴雷。

10、正荣,闽系房企,负债规模约2000亿,2022年2月公告美元债违约,宣告暴雷。

11、富力,粤系房企,负债规模约3000亿,2021年12月7亿美元债展期,宣告暴雷。

12、华夏幸福,产城地产龙头,负债规模约2600亿,2021年2月首次承认52亿债务逾期,宣告暴雷。

13、佳兆业,粤系房企,负债规模约2300亿,2021年11月3亿理财产品未兑付,宣告暴雷。

14、阳光城,闽系房企,负债规模约3500亿,2021年公司理财未兑付,宣告暴雷。

15、奥园,粤系房企,负债规模约2500亿,2021年11月,6590万元信托贷款违约,宣告暴雷。

16、新力,江西房企,负债规模约1000亿,2021年10月2.5亿美元债违约,宣告暴雷。

17、花样年,粤系房企,负债规模约600亿,2021年10月2亿美元债违约,宣告暴雷。

18、当代置业,负债规模约800亿,2021年10月3亿美元债违约,宣告暴雷。

19、中庚地产,闽系房企,负债规模300亿,2021年10月9.3亿债务违约,宣告暴雷。

20、光耀地产,粤系房企,负债规模100亿,2021年9月宣告破产。

21、蓝光,川渝房企,负债规模约2000亿,2021年5月中期票据违约,宣告暴雷,目前逾期未偿还债务已达300亿。

22、阳光100,老牌房企,负债规模约400亿,2021年8月债券违约,宣告暴雷。

23、德润创展,深圳房企,负债20亿,2021年8月宣告破产。

24、广州粤泰,粤系房企,负债规模80亿,2021年8月宣告破产。

25、宝能地产,深圳房企,负债规模2000亿,2021年8月理财产品逾期,宣告暴雷。

26、实地,粤系房企,负债规模约200亿,2021年7月商票拒付,宣告暴雷。

27、三盛宏业,上海房企,负债规模约500亿,2019年10月员工理财未兑付,宣告暴雷,公司老板失踪,被法院悬赏1000万。

28、福晟,闽系房企,负债规模约700亿,2019年12月3亿基金违约兑付,宣告暴雷。

29、泰禾,闽系房企,负债规模约2000亿,2020年7月债券违约,宣告暴雷,目前逾期未偿还债务已达430亿。

30、卓达地产,北方房企,负债规模300亿,2018年开始,卓达24次被列入被执行人,此外还有7起股权冻结,涉及金额约9.14亿。

这30家房企的负债总规模是7.48万亿

also, https://www.reddit.com/media?url=https%3A%2F%2Fi.redd.it%2F%...

yorwba
2 replies
1d1h

Thanks, I much prefer text over video anyway, and now even people who can't read Chinese can join in on the fun, though Google Translate struggles a bit with the 暴雷 slang https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%E6%9A%B4%E9%9B%B7#Verb

cdf
1 replies
20h46m

I'm an overseas Chinese and can read Chinese but not keeping up with modern slang and 暴雷 means to me what you see in the translation... a thunderbolt?

resolutebat
0 replies
19h23m

暴⫽雷 (verb-object)

to default on a large scale; to fail to repay the loan or deposit of many creditors or clients

hmm37
0 replies
21h33m

How did you conclude points 2 and 3 from this data?

r00fus
1 replies
1d2h

1.) Why did it take Evergrande 3 years to liquidate?

Because this isn't "the West". China/CCP is specifically unwinding this slowly to avoid cross-market contagion.

ffgjgf1
0 replies
15h34m

And looting all the remaining assets in the process. Not to mention trying to extract as much as possible from mortgage holders who bought uncompleted houses and have to continue paying even though they’ll never get anything in return.

hmm37
1 replies
21h46m

Do you have any education in finance, securities, law, economics, etc.?

E.g. Your Edit stating that China banned short selling. They didn't ban short selling. They banned borrowing of shares that are "restricted" to short sell.

giva
0 replies
8h44m

I'm quoting wikipedia here:

There are a number of ways of achieving a short position. The most fundamental method is "physical" selling short or short-selling, which involves borrowing assets (often securities such as shares or bonds) and selling them. The investor will later purchase the same number of the same type of securities in order to return them to the lender. If the price has fallen in the meantime, the investor will have made a profit equal to the difference.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Short_(finance)

NoboruWataya
1 replies
23h18m

Why did it take Evergrande 3 years to liquidate? In western countries, liquidation happens in a few months.

No they don't, not for entities of any significant scale or complexity. Lehman Brothers was still in liquidation as of 2022: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bankruptcy_of_Lehman_Brothers

berserk1010
0 replies
16h57m

I mean 3 years to start liquidation. Lehman brother's liquidation started on 9/19/2008, a few days after it filed for bankruptcy on 9/15/2008. https://www.sipc.org/news-and-media/news-releases/20220928

colesantiago
23 replies
1d3h

Great news.

Hopefully this causes bitcoin and crypto to crash all the way below $10,000.

HPsquared
20 replies
1d3h

What's the mechanism?

dheera
19 replies
1d3h

It was suspected that a lot of USDT is backed by Evergrande notes, though they have denied it. Evergrande liquidation may cause a USDT liquidation and cause USDT to lose peg. There are often idiots that will drag the rest of crypto including bitcoin with it, though.

pstrateman
11 replies
1d3h

That kind of thing has usually had the opposite effect.

If USDT is worthless then you want to sell it, causing the price of Bitcoin to rise on those exchanges.

dheera
9 replies
1d3h

If you sell it for BTC, yes, though it's more likely people will get spooked of crypto and sell it for USD.

cko
6 replies
1d3h

If USDT can no longer be redeemed for USD, then people may buy BTC instead?

littlestymaar
5 replies
1d3h

Why would someone accept your USDT and give you bitcoin if USDT is de-pegged and worthless?

loeg
4 replies
1d3h

De-pegged is just any value less than $1. If USDT is 50% collateralized, maybe it is worth $0.50, which is de-pegged but not worthless.

littlestymaar
1 replies
1d

De-pegged (I means really de-pegged, not a transient .97c a dollar on exchanges like it happened) means it's not fulfilling its promise, hence the trust is lost.

Also, Tether would try to save face, by honoring USDT redemption at 1$ as long as they can, which drains their reserves. So if they aren't able to do it anymore, it means that they don't have anything left, and USDT is now worthless.

These things are highly non-linear and bank runs can kill a bank in no time (and tether is functionally a bank).

loeg
0 replies
23h55m

Sure. People disinclined to trust Tether's word are already out of USDT. Clearly, a lot remain. Some of those people might attempt to profit from arbitraging a de-pegged Tether (maybe at $0.97 rather than $0.50 but it's the same principle).

resolutebat
0 replies
19h17m

The only stable values of a USD stablecoin are $1 and $0.

Phlarp
0 replies
1d1h

We said we were 100% collateralized, actually it's only 50% but you can trust us that it really is 50% collateralized this time and we aren't lying again. Transact with trust!

loeg
1 replies
1d3h

Isn't the point of USDT that the vast majority of its holders are locked out of USD? They can liquidate to BTC but it is unclear that they can actually get USD out.

dheera
0 replies
1d3h

It would be nice if the market worked that way and every coin helped each other out as a "crypto team" to beat out fiat together, but the reality is BTC holders are probably going to be spooked and not give you much BTC for your USDT.

And then everyone gets spooked of crypto as a whole and sells for fiat.

Basically whenever "shit" happens all of crypto goes down.

lmm
0 replies
21h50m

The price of USDT will fall off a cliff, yes. That won't make the price of Bitcoin rise except when denominated in USDT.

rekttrader
3 replies
1d3h

USDT is the 25th largest holder of T-bills. This is a bit of bullshit fud.

datadrivenangel
1 replies
1d3h

If they only have 50% of the money they need, they're still missing half, even if that half is huge.

rvnx
0 replies
11h8m

It won't be missing anyway, because they are getting paid interest on what is still here :) Whether it's a scam or not, it works.

timmytokyo
0 replies
1d2h

Tether is an unaudited black box, so no one really knows what their reserves are composed of. Tether's also been caught lying about their reserves numerous times [1], so it would be insane to think they're a credible store of value. Given their history and opaqueness, it's reasonable to assume shenanigans.

[1] https://www.dirtybubblemedia.com/p/examining-tethers-secret-...

HWR_14
1 replies
1d2h

Why would the USDT tell anyone if they were no longer backed 1:1?

lmm
0 replies
21h48m

They haven't told anyone anything. Optimists have assumed the unknown/missing part of their "collateral" is Evergrande bonds rather than having gone up their team's collective noses.

jdewerd
0 replies
1d3h

5% on $100B can patch one hell of a balance sheet hole.

yread
0 replies
1d2h

Best outcome would be housing getting cheaper. One can dream

rossdavidh
0 replies
1d3h

I think if it had happened two years ago, this would have been the result, because at that time Tether was mostly in Chinese bonds (rumor has it), and Tether supported a large part of total bitcoin trade volume.

However, it is possible that they have spent the last two years rotating out of Chinese bonds into T-bills. In fact, it's pretty likely that they have tried to do that; the question is how well they've been able to.

Animats
17 replies
1d3h

That's going to be a tough liquidation. Who wants to buy a half-finished building abandoned during construction due to lack of a market? Such things have negative value.

toomuchtodo
8 replies
1d3h

Wait until buyers stop making mortgage payments on half completed units.

NicoJuicy
5 replies
1d3h

And the reserve requirements of banks were just lowered to help spur growth:

https://www.reuters.com/world/china/china-will-cut-banks-res...

toomuchtodo
4 replies
1d3h

Pushing the string! Can't win against demographics, young folks can't find jobs [1] and China got old fast [2]. 30% of GDP is domestic real estate that is about to fall off a cliff [3].

[1] https://www.cnbc.com/2024/01/25/china-youth-unemployment-wil...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aging_of_China

[3] https://www.axios.com/2023/10/11/chart-chinas-real-estate-st...

thriftwy
3 replies
1d

I'm not sure why won't the old ones buy units for the young ones. Hey, they can even pool!

berserk1010
2 replies
23h21m

They do. it is said that when two people get married, they suck all the savings of the parents from both sides of the family (mostly men's side), as well as the savings of the bride/groom (mostly man), to put down deposit for one house. then it's up to the man of the house to take care of 4 parents, as well as the wife and kids. And you can imagine what happens when the man realizes the house they bought will never be finished, and is worth 50% what they bought

thriftwy
1 replies
23h15m

I expect both pairs of parents to also have their own homes already. So, inheritance-worthy.

However, knowing asian predisposition to longevity, it may not quite pan out in the end.

berserk1010
0 replies
23h1m

The parents are typically living in farming community, with old/run down houses. Which the children dread moving back to, since there is no money nor future.

rossdavidh
1 replies
1d3h

My impression was this had already started a while back.

toomuchtodo
0 replies
1d3h

There has been evidence that it has been occurring, but China is notoriously hostile to citizens who default on financial obligations, so I would expect with liquidation proceeding you'll see a lot more folks decide to stop making payments than those with a more activist appetite previously.

ANZ’s senior China economist Betty Wang believes the scale of the problem is much bigger. She estimates that 1.5 trillion yuan ($223 billion) of mortgage loans, or 4% of banks’ total outstanding mortgage loans, could be affected by the movement.

“What concerns us is if more home buyers cease payment, the spreading trend will not only threaten the health of the financial system but also create social issues amid the current economic downturn,” she wrote in a report on Thursday.

https://www.cnn.com/2022/07/14/economy/china-property-crisis... (2022)

Kon-Peki
7 replies
1d1h

Who wants to buy a half-finished building abandoned during construction

This is actually not a big deal at all if you are following modern high-rise construction techniques.

10u152
4 replies
1d

The problem is can you trust the structure/QA process, is the documentation in place etc. Otherwise it’s a liability nightmare

Kon-Peki
2 replies
22h0m

Anyone with the means and ability to take over a project is going to know what they’re getting into before signing any papers or handing over any money :)

anon-sre-srm
0 replies
12h35m

Yep. And the presumption during construction was creating a usable building, so it's not necessarily all that risky. The risk is in monetizing that floor space.

NoPicklez
0 replies
21h32m

Right and that can also mean it might be a tough liquidation to find someone with the means and ability.

Tough doesn't mean it can't happen, just that it might be harder than normal to square it away

smfjaw
0 replies
22h20m

I somehow think the ccp might look favourably and ignore some liabilities if someone else becomes the new bag holder, you know, saving their RE industry and stuff

raverbashing
0 replies
14h37m

Yes I'm sure they're following all of those in China, and buildings don't just fall like a pancake

coffeebeqn
0 replies
21h50m

Is there any guarantee what you buy will ever be fully funded and finished? Sounds like a nice hole to pour your money into and never see it again. I guess you could move in without utilities if your floor is finished

2OEH8eoCRo0
13 replies
1d20h

What will the creditors even get? Unfinished projects? That seems like more of a burden than anything. Zoinks!

seanmcdirmid
12 replies
1d19h

It’s worse than that. They have unfinished projects with units that have already been bought on mortgage. You have people making monthly payments for unfinished apartments (and I don’t mean just unrenovated, which is expected).

That guy who was banned from trading in Hong Kong in 2016 for shorting the stock in 2012 must feel vindicated, at least.

ratg13
8 replies
1d18h

You neglect to mention that they are unfinished on purpose.

In reality these "homes" are nothing more than a concrete box for legal/tax reasons.

These are second or third "homes" for people that were purchased as a poor investment.

The investors should eat the losses.

seanmcdirmid
6 replies
1d18h

Many of them aren't second homes. The ones in the ghost cities sure, but Evergrande has (had?) more legit projects that were designed as actual housing. In any case, given that the mainland stock market is pretty much known as a sham, real estate has been the only investment option for much of the middle class. Investors "eating" their losses basically means huge widespread social upheaval in China. Imagine everyone being equivalent to their 401k going belly up, that wouldn't be pretty.

greenhexagon
5 replies
1d18h

There is much about China that I don't understand, but I'm curious about the ownership in the "ghost cities".

Given the ability of the CCP to significantly control major industries and movement of people, is it not possible that someone might buy an apartment in a "ghost city" while living in a rural area or renting in another city, expecting that people and jobs would flow to the city once it was completed?

Basically I don't really understand all the details, nuance and different corporate and governmental players involved in the "ghost city" phenomenon, but I'd almost expect that the government could make a "ghost city" into a "real city" in no time, by shutting down factories in one city and opening them there, or by changing internal migration restrictions.

gruez
2 replies
1d8h

Given the ability of the CCP to significantly control major industries and movement of people, is it not possible that someone might buy an apartment in a "ghost city" while living in a rural area or renting in another city, expecting that people and jobs would flow to the city once it was completed?

Seems like it?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Under-occupied_developments_in...

Many developments initially criticized as ghost cities did materialize into economically vibrant areas when given enough time to develop, such as Pudong, Zhujiang New Town, Zhengdong New Area, Tianducheng and malls such as the Golden Resources Mall and South China Mall.[15] While many developments failed to live up to initial lofty promises, most of them eventually became occupied when given enough time.[6][16]

Reporting in 2018, Shepard noted that "Today, China’s so-called ghost cities that were so prevalently showcased in 2013 and 2014 are no longer global intrigues. They have filled up to the point of being functioning, normal cities".[17]

Writing in 2023, academic and former UK diplomat Kerry Brown described the idea of Chinese ghost cities as a bandwagon popular in the 2010s which was shown to be a myth.[18]: 151-152
seanmcdirmid
0 replies
1d7h

Kangbashi is never filling up like they planned, simply because coal is no longer booming like it once was. You can only do so much when the trend you were hoping for doesn’t pan out. It’s a district designed for a few million holding up at 50k or so.

Tianjin will always have a few ghost districts and skyscrapers. They eventually fill up after a decade or two or are razed for something else. It was like that when I first visited China in 1999 as well.

mensetmanusman
0 replies
20h19m

They will be ghost cities in 2100.

seanmcdirmid
0 replies
1d17h

The Chinese government isn’t as powerful as you think it is, nor as centralized. All of these ghost cities (more like ghost districts) are local government driven, so the central government doesn’t care much to fill them. The local governments can push state activity there, like as happened in Ordos (city) and kangbashi (ghost district of city), but they can’t really control the rest of the economic activity needed to make it a thriving place. In Ordos’s case, the downfall of coal is going to depress the city no matter what, the central government won’t bother to save them.

s1artibartfast
0 replies
1d17h

That is certainly the less cynical take.

Few real people buy homes knowing with certainty they would remain empty. People speculated on new development, future growth, and induced demand. For some reason, people online like to make them martyrs or idiots. lots of schadenfreude.

The reality is a lot more mundane. They were just a risky investment bubble that popped.

ffgjgf1
0 replies
15h25m

Allow banks to give out mortgages in such cases should be illegal too.

voisin
2 replies
1d18h

Jim Chanos?

seanmcdirmid
1 replies
1d17h

No, Andrew Left. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrew_Left#:~:text=In%202016%... and https://markets.businessinsider.com/news/stocks/andrew-left-...

Basically, the Hong Kong stock exchange is increasingly a scam as well.

mcphage
0 replies
1d3h

“The finest line of poetry ever uttered in the history of this whole damn country was said by Canada Bill Jones in 1853, in Baton Rouge, while he was being robbed blind in a crooked game of faro. George Devol, who was, like Canada Bill, not a man who was averse to fleecing the odd sucker, drew Bill aside and asked him if he couldn't see that the game was crooked. And Canada Bill sighed, and shrugged his shoulders, and said, 'I know. But it's the only game in town.' And he went back to the game.” — Neil Gaiman
s1artibartfast
12 replies
1d19h

I cant help but recall a 2015 Peter Theil interview with Tyler Cowen [1] where he talked about the black magic predictive power of company names. Hard to unsee a company called "ever bigger" getting overextended.

https://conversationswithtyler.com/episodes/peter-thiel/

aspenmayer
10 replies
1d19h

There’s a word for that self-fulfilling prophetic philosophical/hypothetical principle: nominative determinism.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nominative_determinism

downvotetruth
8 replies
1d18h

That is two words or a phrase. Also, it is understood to refer to the names of people and not all countries are known to be liberal as some in the legal equality of incorporated entities - maybe alethonym or an orthonym. More practically, in the US the SEC could take the initiative and at least extend https://www.sec.gov/news/statement/lizarraga-statement-names... to some of the absurd ticker names especially given the desire to focus on humorless freeway postings.

aspenmayer
7 replies
1d18h

That is two words or a phrase.

In a word: no. Specifically, it’s a compound word (singular).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compound_(linguistics)

lowbloodsugar
3 replies
23h46m

Since we're at "quoting wikipedia" levels of pedantry, may I point out that your article calls this a "Compound" not a "Compound word". And the statement "group of words that is not a compound is a phrase" requires that there exists a "group of words that is a compound". "If they are joined with a space (e.g. school bus, high school, lowest common denominator), then the result – at least in English[1] – may be an open compound." Here, the word "they" refers to "words", and the article does not say that such a group of words is an "open compound word".

So that is two words, that together form a Compound.

More explicitly, from the definition for "Word" [1]: "For example, ice cream, air raid shelter and get up each are generally considered to consist of more than one word (as each of the components are free forms, with the possible exception of get), and so is no one, but the similarly compounded someone and nobody are considered single words."

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Word#Orthography

aspenmayer
2 replies
23h37m

It’s an open compound word composed of individual words that aren’t used singularly, in that the meaning is changed if they are interpreted individually or singly. This isn’t an adjective phrase in this case. I don’t know who you’re trying to convince but the person I responded to is simply mistaken or ignorant of compound words and how they are used, interpreted, or referred to. The fact that open compound words are made up of parts that would be multiple words if used in a different context doesn’t change the facts of my original statement, but I do appreciate you taking the time to elucidate the point further. Nothing you have written here contradicts anything I wrote. Open compound words are considered single words lexically because the entire compound word fulfills the role of a single part of speech in a given sentence.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Part_of_speech

downvotetruth
1 replies
20h35m

The use of ad hominen discredits claims and turns off readers. Nominative determinism is not a compound word as compounds are formed by combining free morphemes and the suffix -ive is bound.

aspenmayer
0 replies
20h3m

It’s not an ad hominem to suggest that someone is wrong or mistaken about a point of fact when that’s the context of the discussion.

Determinism is a distinct concept, and while related to nominative determinism, in the sentence I used, I don’t think it’s accurate to say that the word nominative is an adjective modifying determinism because nominative determinism is itself a distinct concept that functions singly as an appositive after an independent clause and a colon.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apposition

I’ll admit that you are free to disagree on this point or any other I have made, and I wouldn’t consider you wrong to do so. My remarks regarding what you posted in response another person in the thread were meant to contrast our views on this matter. Clearly, it’s implied that these are my views, and it’s okay to be wrong, and I’ll admit that I may be considered wrong myself by you, but to say so isn’t an ad hominem because we were both making truth claims with the unstated assumption that we each believe ourselves to be right. It’s not an insult or claim for/against you personally or regarding your character. It’s just how I view your claims on this topic as evidenced by your comments.

It just seems needlessly pedantic to derail an entire thread to call someone out for supposedly miscounting words when it’s literally beside the point I was making, but I respect your difference of opinion.

calrain
1 replies
1d18h

I think this example is called an open compound word, or a phrase.

aspenmayer
0 replies
1d18h

Yes, an open compound word, not two words in this technical context. Not a phrase, per se, which seems odd to me also, but in this linguistic context, words, uh, have meaning. /s

From the Wikipedia link I posted above, especially the last quoted line:

Compounding occurs when two or more words or signs are joined to make a longer word or sign. If the joining of the words or signs is orthographically represented with a hyphen, the result is a hyphenated compound (e.g., must-have, hunter-gatherer). If they are joined without an intervening space, it is a closed compound (e.g., footpath, blackbird). If they are joined with a space (e.g. school bus, high school, lowest common denominator), then the result – at least in English – may be an open compound. A group of words that is not a compound is a phrase.
downvotetruth
0 replies
1d18h

With very few exceptions, English compound words are stressed on their first component stem; yet, stress appears both on the first syllable of NOM-uh-nuh-tiv and the dih-TUR verb portion.

anotherhue
0 replies
1d18h

For a long time I thought Bernie Madoff was a joke on this because he 'made off' with everyone's money.

It's almost as bad as the people who gave Ponzi their money despite the hint being right there in his name /s

cdf
0 replies
20h35m

"This agglomeration which was called and which still calls itself the Holy Roman Empire was neither holy, nor Roman, nor an empire." ― Voltaire

nwah1
7 replies
1d3h

The question is then whether they actually have enough assets to pay their debts.

more_corn
6 replies
1d3h

Ooh! I got this one. They do not.

seanmcdirmid
4 replies
1d3h

The bigger question is if China is going to prioritize local debt holders over overseas debt holder (everyone should take a massive haircut though), and what happens to the apartments they've sold but not built yet (since Chinese banks have lent money to people to buy those).

rossdavidh
1 replies
1d3h

Ooh! I got this one! They will.

BeFlatXIII
0 replies
9h14m

Good, a nation with self-respect.

dageshi
1 replies
1d2h

Is there that much chinese debt owned by overseas investors? I'd always thought the chinese deliberately insulated their financial system as much as possible to avoid foreign influence over their economy.

seanmcdirmid
0 replies
1d2h

Enough of it:

https://www.reuters.com/business/china-evergrande-offshore-b...

About $2b worth out of $300b of debt, so not that much, although I'm not sure if this is just one group of many.

foobarbaz33
0 replies
1d2h

Yo dawg. I heard you like leverage. So I put some leverage inside your leverage to help prevent the tower of leverages from falling.

thomasfl
6 replies
12h23m

Just as serious is the problem of poor quality concrete used in many buildings in china. Due to corruption, many new buildings have been built of concrete made with normal beach sand. Sand with salt causes iron to corrode and the concrete becomes brittle. It is commonly known as tofu dreg. Lots of buildings have already collapsed. If the bubble burst, and the property market collapses, it will hopefully make houses more robust in the future.

throw__away7391
4 replies
10h15m

It is always crazy to me the ratio of damage done to benefit received by people committing crime and fraud. I don't know how much one could possibly pocket using such scheme, but I'm certain that compared to the destruction of the entire project it is not that high of a percent.

prometheus76
2 replies
10h0m

They've already made their money and moved on to the next scam. Those living in the building are the ones who pay the ultimate price.

throw__away7391
1 replies
8h50m

Clearly, I'm just astounded by the magnitude of destruction people are willing to commit. It's like stealing a loaf of bread from your neighbor and then burning down his house to cover up the crime.

__rito__
0 replies
8h44m

Not only well-meaning people suffer from near-sightedness. Conmen do, too.

While committing the act, they just think in the short term, and not about the absolute destruction of people's lives and property.

This nearsightedness complicate many problems further, and worsen them.

badpun
0 replies
3h13m

As a popular Polish libertarian politician (Janusz Korwin-Mikke) likes to say: "a government official will waste a billion to steal a million".

red-iron-pine
0 replies
9h35m

like the national and maybe global economy will collapse and resulting economic shockwaves will screw over millions (billions?).

but robust houses, man. in the future. eventually.

class3shock
6 replies
23h33m

Does anyone know a good source (news site, podcast, blogger) for info on china? Politics, economics, housing, etc.? Preferably something from a more asian centric source?

bobthepanda
2 replies
23h29m

People's Daily for the Party's view and SCMP for a slightly less biased view.

There isn't really such a thing as free press covering China well, particularly in Asia. The closest thing was the Hong Kong press, but that got muzzled a few years back. RSF currently rates only Taiwan and South Korea as countries with free press in Asia, and those are not going to have the most unbiased view about China. https://rsf.org/en/region/asia-pacific

(RSF lumps Oceania in their Asia rankings, I wouldn't call Samoa or Australia Asian countries)

testrun
1 replies
16h41m

Japan press should be fine too.

bobthepanda
0 replies
13h59m

The press in Japan is noted for a fair amount of self-censorship in regards to covering government and business. https://www.dw.com/en/why-japan-ranks-poorly-in-press-freedo...

emptysongglass
0 replies
16h55m

Somehow your only suggestions from HN have been the official propaganda paper of the CPC and a newspaper owned by Alibaba.

The news source you're looking for is Bill Bishop's Sinocism. It's a paid Substack. I haven't found any other news source that really gets into the nitty gritty of China happenings.

carom
0 replies
23h23m

There is usually a bloomberg reporter on Twitter giving weekly summaries like these [1]. It used to be someone else but it looks like it is this account now.

1. https://x.com/rchoongwilkins/status/1750810417260351500?s=46

Leary
0 replies
20h25m

SCMP

bArray
5 replies
13h39m

Months after China Evergrande ran out of cash and defaulted in 2021, investors around the world scooped up the property developer’s discounted I.O.U.’s, betting that the Chinese government would eventually step in to bail it out.

One thing investors should always be clear about with the CCP - as a foreigner you will always be screwed over if it benefits the CCP. The CCP is extremely hostile, even having strained relations with other Communist Countries [1].

After two years in limbo, and with over $300 billion in debt, Evergrande was ordered by a judge in Hong Kong to liquidate, a move that will set off a race by lawyers to try to find and grab anything belonging to Evergrande that can be sold.

This will not pay out foreign holders of I.O.U.'s, because of this:

There isn’t a lot left in Evergrande’s sprawling empire that still has value. And any assets that are valuable may be off limits because property in China has become intertwined with politics.

I hope this is a lesson to investors.

I ultimately feel sorry for the people who invested into housing and who are now stuck with mortgages they must continue to pay despite having no property. T

Financial markets in mainland China and Hong Kong — a city that has for years been an entry point for foreign investment — have received such a blow that officials are scrambling to find policy measures like a stock market rescue fund to shore up confidence. On Sunday, they moved to stop short selling, a practice that allows investors to bet against a stock.

The CCP over-stepped and took Hong Kong, which should still be under partial UK control and therefore an attractive entry for foreign investment. The CCP caused foreign investment in Hong Kong to be withdrawn and got this ball rolling.

This is just the beginning. Almost all provinces in China are now broke and the economy has taken a very significant down-turn. Property is one of their largest investments and I am not aware of a financially good developer operating in China. There appears to already be talk of restrictions on bank withdrawals to prevent a run on the banks.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sino-Soviet_relations

saiya-jin
2 replies
13h4m

Neither China nor Russia are communist countries for very long time. Folks here with more experience can describe better than me what actual regime there is, to me it seems like some mixture of brutal capitalism and regulated markets, dictatorship of the elite, all drowning in corruption. What labels they put themselves on doesn't really matter, does it.

nvm0n2
0 replies
9h36m

How can you have both brutal capitalism and regulated markets? Those are normally presented as opposites, as in, "we regulate markets to soften the impact of raw capitalism".

China isn't really a capitalist country. It's more capitalist than it used to be in the 70s, but as this refusing-to-liquidate nonsense shows, the basic rules of capitalism don't really work there. China ignores many things that are required to really do capitalism properly:

- IP rights aren't enforced

- Other kinds of property rights aren't enforced (see the ARM subsidiary that simply declared independence)

- Staying out of private business (see Ant Group)

- Many companies and industries are state owned

- Industrial policy is still the standard in China (compare to the USA)

- Markets aren't informed (rampant censorship, bad data)

and so on.

bArray
0 replies
11h25m

Neither China nor Russia are communist countries for very long time.

The Soviet Union is since 1922 [1] and basically still exists today under the leadership of Putin. The CCP is since 1921 [2] and is still in power today. Both have 100+ years under their belts.

Folks here with more experience can describe better than me what actual regime there is, to me it seems like some mixture of brutal capitalism and regulated markets, dictatorship of the elite, all drowning in corruption.

It's what communism always looks like. At some point all systems are setup to incentivize the individual in order to ensure production happens. Over use of socialism almost always results in some percentage of the population choosing to do nothing to support the society they benefit from. It's why ideas like UBI will never work. The only other way to ensure production happens is to use the stick rather than the carrot.

What labels they put themselves on doesn't really matter, does it.

Almost a "real communism has never been tried!" type argument.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_Union

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_Communist_Party

KaiserPro
1 replies
13h23m

which should still be under partial UK control and therefore an attractive entry for foreign investment.

As a brit, much as my colonial arse would love this to be true, the lease expired and Britain never had any real control over HK post handover. The only power we had was economic, and we've well and truly fucked that. the UK of the 80/90s is not the UK of today. For better or worse.

bArray
0 replies
11h38m

Pretty sure there was an agreement in place [1]:

This blueprint would be elaborated on in the Hong Kong Basic Law (the post-handover regional constitution) and the central government's policies for the territory were to remain unchanged for a period of 50 years after 1997.

We should have simply never have handed it back over to China and allowed Hong Kong to remain independent. From what I understand, it was some compromise that involved the Royal Family.

As a brit, much as my colonial arse would love this to be true [..]

I'm not going to paint a picture that British colonisation was all good, but some Countries had it better. In recent times the people of Hong Kong and Burma (Myanmar) have begged for British intervention.

[..] the UK of the 80/90s is not the UK of today. For better or worse.

I would love to disagree with you, but I can't. I suspect most Countries are in precisely the same place, where the average person feels as though things have gotten worse.

I think the way to solve it would be to take a near-term economic down-turn and solve our fundamental issues: the interest on debt alone is astronomical, local governments need cleaning up (if only people knew the half of how corrupt they are), large investment into local security (military, NHS, energy, food, manufacturing), etc, etc. The next 20-40 years would be miserable but we would emerge strong.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sino-British_Joint_Declaration

valgaze
4 replies
15h20m

In downtown Los Angeles directly across the street from Staples Center/crypto where the Lakers play and a stone's throw from The Palm steakhouse is an imposing yet unfinished skyscraper. The idea was retail on the bottom, hotel in the middle, and $$ residences higher up

It has languished incomplete-- basically rotting-- in part because of EB-5 financing trouble + Oceanwide.

It's expensive to finish, expensive to demolish and the hellish post-covid/high-interest commercial real estate landscape means it will likely remain there for a while

It's just been sitting there because of EB-5 financing trouble. Especially in post-Covid commercial real estate environment

The fiasco took down a sitting City Councilman (who was just sentenced 13 years in prison: https://www.justice.gov/usao-cdca/pr/former-los-angeles-poli...)

More info:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oceanwide_Plaza

https://www.costar.com/article/2030217368/los-angeles-skyscr...

xwolfi
1 replies
9h18m

Sir, this is a Wendy's

worstestes
0 replies
8h58m

And this isn’t Reddit

anon-sre-srm
1 replies
12h37m

Residential is the way forward. Many projects and formerly commercial buildings are getting the apartment conversion treatment, complete with bullshit interior dead spaces to meet regulatory requirements.

It's not a lie, it's commercial real estate!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FbTR3lDuYqk&list=PLkH0kJMHYO...

reustle
0 replies
11h42m

complete with bullshit interior dead spaces to meet regulatory requirements.

At least in NYC, the requirement is that bedrooms need to have a window. Are there more requirements than that? I've had kitchens w/out windows in NYC. Bedrooms needing windows doesn't seem very BS to me.

throwaway2037
3 replies
8h4m

This is a much more financially accurate article: https://www.ft.com/content/d7b61c43-be36-49da-894e-cac68fefb...

While Evergrande is listed in Hong Kong, almost all of its assets and the vast majority of its more than $300bn in liabilities are in China.

In theory, the ruling could pave the way for liquidators to attempt to seize control of some Evergrande assets in mainland China, since Hong Kong has a mutual recognition agreement on insolvency and restructuring that applies in some parts of China.

However, it is not clear how far mainland courts will accept the Hong Kong winding-up order.

In short, this headline is wildly overstated. This is a minority jurisdiction that is overreaching. There is no way that Mainland Chinese courts will respect the decision. Frankly, I would say the same if a giant French property developer happened to be listed on the Amsterdam Stock Exchange. If a Dutch court ordered them to liquidate, I cannot believe the French gov't would allow it. (To be clear: I am not an EU hater here. Vice versa would also be true.)

My prediction: China with directly or indirectly nationalise Evergrande. Most bondholders (especially foreigners) will be wiped out. Most of the unfinished buildings will be completed in 2-5 years.

bilekas
0 replies
6h15m

Most of the unfinished buildings will be completed in 2-5 years.

If not fallen down by then. The Tofu Dredge of Evergrand won't age in anyway for even other developers to acquire for completion.

berserk1010
0 replies
6h34m

Most of the unfinished buildings will be completed in 2-5 years.

Many things wrong with that statement. Chinese local governments are overloaded with debt - 12.6 TRILLION https://www.reuters.com/markets/asia/china-orders-local-gove.... National government has refused to supply local governments with more money, in fact it has limited some local governments to what they can build. Local Governments have zero incentives to add more inventory to an already bloated real estate supplies. A lot of these unfinished buildings were left unfinished for a number of years, is already left to ruin, and unsalvageable. Tofu dreg building qualities means it's easier to demolish these buildings.

NicoJuicy
0 replies
4h29m

China with directly or indirectly nationalise Evergrande. Most bondholders (especially foreigners) will be wiped out. Most of the unfinished buildings will be completed in 2-5 years.

I'm willing to take that bet!

My prediction, a bit different, not that much.

1) nationalized. Yes

2) foreigners will be wiped out. Yes.

3) Huge backlash and more foreign money will leave China

4) China will backtrack a bit to appease ( a bit, but not enough)

5) Most buildings won't be completed. China doesn't have the funds anymore to build property like x years ago. The elite already took out their money. Civilians lost their "investment" and won't buy real estate like they did in the past.

6) Property declines further. Others like Evergrande will fall.

7) property becomes "cheap" ( relatively)

8) population declines

9) property becomes even cheaper

... Etc

The thing I consider differently and shapes my narrative, is that it seems that China made a huge construction bet on population growth. And it seems that bet was wrong.

So they don't want to finish those buildings, since it would drive prices down quicker.

--- A lot of buildings were already abandoned and were never going to be build.

There's an elite group that can borrow money in China and they don't need much collateral for it. So they construct 25%, cash in and are gone. Perhaps this practice isn't common for Evergrande though.

But those buildings were abandoned because no one was willing to put in the 75% required to complete it ( which is a similar story, not the same though)

Source of this practice: a friend had to setup one of his client's division in China for a couple of weeks a couple of years ago.

spywaregorilla
2 replies
1d3h

Long time comin. Sounds like its only going to hit the non-china stuff though? How does that compare in terms of value? I would wager without much special insight that the bulk of their worst underwater assets are in china.

datadrivenangel
1 replies
1d3h

Contagion will be non-zero. World economy may not fall apart over this, but there will be some sympathy bubble bursting I think.

spywaregorilla
0 replies
1d3h

sorry I meant purely within the scope of evergrande and their "non china stuff"

pama
2 replies
1d20h

I hope this event has limited international implications, but I'm afraid it may be a mess.

jacknews
1 replies
1d17h

I remember reading a couple of analyses that suggested they were shifting a lot of the debt out of China, on to international investors, so thay'd be taking the hit. I guess they completed that process.

Edit: should have read the piece - it seems this is exactly what they did - dangled (or at least, failed to deny) the prospect a government bailout, to offload the debt to international speculators.

klipklop
0 replies
1d16h

Ooof you would have to be a massive fool to take on the debt hoping the Chinese government would pay you, a foreign debt holder, back.

lifestyleguru
1 replies
1d2h

It took them two years to bankrupt twice and this isn't even their final bankruptcy yet.

lainga
0 replies
1d1h

In Dengist-Trotskyist synthesis, the revolutionary class must be constantly and permanently going bankrupt.

andrewstuart
1 replies
20h33m

Country Garden next?

berserk1010
0 replies
17h54m

Definitely. And country garden is bigger and more focused on properties in non-tier 1 cities than Evergrande, and has 4X more unfinished buildings than Evergrande, which means the collapse will be even greater

ChrisArchitect
1 replies
1d20h
neonate
0 replies
1d2h
binary132
0 replies
9h58m

I’ve never heard “Big Bang” used as a modifier for “End”. I sure hope it doesn’t get traction.