That surprised me also but that is 6 people per home. Considering the institution of the extended family is probably not completely dead, that doesn't seem altogether implausible.

Edit: Given this - it seems like China might be able to more easily absorb this many apartments being put on the market. One could imagine a lot of people entering a modern world where they wouldn't live with their parents (or child).

According to [1], there were about 814 million urban residents in 2017. Assuming an increase upto 850 over 2018 (and it's probably lower than that, checking the historic increase), the average occupancy is closer to 3.4, which is more realistic.

[1] https://www.statista.com/statistics/278566/urban-and-rural-p...

My Vietnamese home has 6 people. mother, father, me and my brother, 2 of my cousins.

One child policy since 1979 https://wikipedia.org/wiki/One-child_policy

Yes, but an extended family spans multiple generations. You can easily get over ten people even if the last generation consists of one person per pair of parents.

Still, I'm sure there's a bunch of people that only live together on paper, or multiple families that share a house because they're poor, and the like.

That's just the _urban_ homes.

What percentage of the population is urban these days?

Answered in the other sub-thread (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18936054)

55%. So over 770 millions.

the numbers were for urban homes I believe. China has a LOT of rural or small-town inhabitants. Not sure what the breakdown is these days though.