Chinese mortgage crisis - request for long form / deep dives

[bostonimproper]

Apologies if this is considered too world events / political (feel free to delete if so), but curious if anyone has seen any good long form articles or deep dives on the Chinese mortgage crisis they’d be willing to share? Particularly interested in the potential macro contagion risks for ex-China investors and consumers.

[unemployable]

Not super in-depth, but has links to other articles. Bloomberg has a low limit on free articles though, so you might want to use some sort of paywall bypass.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/storythr ... emium-asia

Maybe 70% of ZeroHedge is junk, but they do have some insightful content from time to time. They've run some other treatises besides this one; you can google "zerohedge chinese real estate"

https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/just- ... tail-risks

Chinese real estate is probably the world's largest asset class. The gist of it is that Chinese invest in real estate the way Americans invest in stonks, and just as with the US stonk market, with the government's almost nakedly explicit blessing. It's their savings account.

[ertyu]

https://www.scmp.com/knowledge/china-ma ... pe=article

If you aren't already reading the South China Morning Post, I find they're pretty good. Unsure if they have the exact article you're searching for, but they might

Edit: I looked through the Bloomberg news stream and it seems to me there is too much fear-mongering. When it comes to China, I've always believed the strong central government means policy levers that might not be available to the west. To the extent that the problem is in yuan, it's not a problem because the yuan will be printed. Imo the developers are being shaken up for political reasons - which means the shaking up is likely to be controlled rather than a disorderly crisis. Some opinion piece was saying this gives out lehman vibes but imo that's bs

[white belt]

I’m skeptical that SCMP retains much independence at this point due to the CCP’s control of Hong Kong. Nevertheless they do seem to be posting headlines that are quite critical of the Chinese government, so perhaps they’ve figured out a way to preserve some independence.

My go to place for China-specific news is SupChina. They don’t seem to have any specific coverage on a mortgage “crisis” but they do have a few articles on the recent bank protests. This tells me that it might be a business story, but has not bubbled up to being a bigger social/political story yet. Their business coverage branch, Caixin, does have some stories on the situation but they are all behind paywalls.

I read the Bloomberg piece and it seems China Beige Book is following along closely as well. The reality is accurate economic data coming out of China is nearly impossible to get, so even if this is the early stages of a large event, it will be very difficult to tell. As @ertyu points out, there are many levers available to the Chinese government that can be implemented at the earliest signs of social or economic distress.

TLDR: Might be something, but too early to tell. Worth following along but probably not worth losing sleep over at this juncture.

[WFJ]

This documentary was more from a Chinese citizens point of view. It's a tragic situation for many individual Chinese people.

https://www3.nhk.or.jp/nhkworld/en/tv/a ... 6/2022323/

[ertyu]

This documentary was more from a Chinese citizens point of view. It's a tragic situation for many individual Chinese people.

https://www3.nhk.or.jp/nhkworld/en/tv/a ... 6/2022323/

Looks interesting but I only see static images, is there anything I need to do to get it to play or is there no video

[WFJ]

Looks interesting but I only see static images, is there anything I need to do to get it to play or is there no video

This link looks active. Might also be available on NHK app.

https://www3.nhk.or.jp/nhkworld/en/onde ... o/3016103/

[ertyu]

This link looks active. Might also be available on NHK app.

https://www3.nhk.or.jp/nhkworld/en/onde ... o/3016103/

this worked, thank you

[ertyu]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WE5VczIFGZA

30 min of Michael Pettis on the current state of economic growth in China. While not directly about the mortgage chrisis, the video provides a macro context and on several occasions implies that the deleveraging of the real estate sector is deliberate policy.

edited to remove a claim that was proven to be a hoax

[sky]

https://youtu.be/2tRL6XeNohI

Role of Belt and Road Initiative in Chinese debt crisis.