2024-02-09
48 分钟The Economist.
Warning lights are flickering across China's economy.
China's stock market tumbled for a third consecutive year in 2023.
Its benchmark CSI 300 index of Shanghai and Shenzhen listed stocks dropped 11% last year and has extended its slide into the new year.
During previous Chinese stock market slumps,
investors were at least able to take comfort in the knowledge that their property investments were probably doing well.
In the first decade of Xi Jinping's leadership of the Chinese Communist Party,
the country invested 427 trillion Chinese yuan in real estate,
about 60 trillion US dollars in today's money.
Now the property market is shuddering too.
with no signs of relief.
There seems to be no safe haven for investors anywhere in China,
and the pain is being felt everywhere at once.
Meanwhile, no end in sight to China's property, malaise,
home prices falling the most in almost nine years across 70 cities in the world's second biggest economy.
The impact of the property market seizure has hit China hard,
much harder than it would anywhere else.
That's because about 80% of China's household wealth is made up of housing assets,
compared to more like a quarter in the US.
And that is becoming a problem for economic growth.