#自言自语[超话]#[The biggest focus]
Pessimistically speaking, the authorities are only willing to rescue the property market—not individual enterprises or citizens—because real estate remains their top priority. However, if their efforts to stabilize the housing market fail and a full-blown property crash occurs, it could trigger currency depreciation, making mortgage repayments even more unaffordable for ordinary people. Historically, the government has treated the property sector as sacrosanct and never allowed significant price declines. Yet this time, both the real estate market and small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) have been severely hit by the pandemic, so officials won’t simply stand by. Still, there’s no guarantee they can successfully prop up the market this round.
Beyond currency depreciation, due to past policy incentives that encouraged real estate investment, virtually every domestic enterprise—without exception—has heavily invested in property. Therefore, a real estate collapse would likely bankrupt nearly all Chinese companies, triggering an unprecedented “unemployment tsunami” affecting over 100 million people. In the entire history of human civilization and economics, there has never been an unemployment crisis on such a scale .
Similarly, once property values plummet, commercial landlords will see rental income drop below operational costs. Even though rents become cheaper, tenants—facing income losses from the housing crisis—won’t be able to afford them anyway, leading many to simply shut down their businesses. This creates a vicious cycle. The same dynamic applies to developers, homeowners, and property owners: as asset values collapse, cash flows dry up, and defaults multiply. Ultimately, neither developers nor individual owners will escape bankruptcy.
In summary, a real estate crash would result in mutual destruction from top to bottom. It would unleash a cascade of disasters: mass corporate failures, bank insolvencies, foreign capital flight, sovereign and private debt crises, widespread unemployment, currency devaluation, hyperinflation, and severe social unrest . Under these circumstances, everyone can only muddle through day by day, hoping that aggressive government intervention delays the day of catastrophic price collapse. If it arrives, the consequences will be far worse than most people currently imagine—or are prepared for.
This reminds me of a conversation a year ago about the China-U.S. trade war. I pointed out plainly: in truth, the U.S. was merely using one or two domestic tech firms as sacrificial examples—“killing a chicken to scare the monkey”—to pressure China into submission. If America truly wanted to inflict maximum damage, it wouldn’t waste time on minor provocations. It would target China’s real estate sector directly. Of course, there’s also the grim possibility that no external action is even needed—because the system might implode on its own, without a single shot being fired.
—This was my reply to my younger sister a week ago. http://t.cn/AXVezPWc
