Yeah that's interesting. What I've also read is that property was one of the only private assets not taxed at the same rate in China so is a good place to store capital (or that was the expectation). Secondly, a huge initiative of the Chinese Government beginning in 2008 was to "go west" and they started providing a significant amount of funding for major infrastructure and development projects with the "if you build it they will come" mentality. Still possible that type of migration west could happen -- particularly as China expands trade relationships with the countries to their west as well...
The explanation I heard was more about capital controls. A fairly well-off middle class Chinese citizen cannot plan for retirement by buying into an S&P 500 fund and waiting three decades. Chinese bonds have negative real rates. And the fate of the stock prices of domestic Chinese companies are subject to the vagarities of the shifting whims of the Chinese government. Where else are they going to put their money? An apartment that sits there empty for two decades and then gets sold looks quite attractive in that context.
Yeah, the curious thing is. China still borrows cheaply from the world bank and they use that ( partially) for the one road, one belt initiative.
This has very recently changed, if I'm not mistaken.
It's part of not being an developed countries. And the requirements were accepted by a loan to the world bank of 7,7 billion $ from America ( from memory)
