90M empty/unfinished homes in China
An estimated 90 million homes in China are empty, unsold, or unfinished — the legacy of the real estate bust.
Snapshot · Planet Money
Building things and breaking things in China (Summer School World Tour)
Explore episode
Jul 15, 2026
Where this was said
Xi Jinping Pops the Bubble: The 2017 Party Congress Turning Point
At 17:17 · chapter starts 15:00
Emily Feng was at the 2017 Party Congress as a Financial Times correspondent when Xi Jinping delivered his long address — and buried within it was a single line that would reshape China's economy. 'Houses are made for living in, not for speculating' was a pointed rebuke of property investment culture and a clear signal that the regulatory screws were about to tighten. [1] — Emily Feng "Buried deep in Xi Jinping's 2017 Party Congress speech was one sentence: houses are for living in, not speculating. That single line kicked…" 14:30 The years that followed saw rolling restrictions on local governments, banks, developers, and individual investors. By 2020, the government codified its position with the 'three red lines' — hard caps on three different measures of developer debt. Cross the line, lose access to loans. By 2021, Evergrande had hundreds of billions of dollars in debt and was missing payments. Robert Smith updates the story from 2026: Evergrande defaulted, its founder pled guilty to fraud, and China is now sitting on an estimated 90 million empty, unsold, or unfinished homes.
Evergrande: hundreds of billions in debt
By 2021, Evergrande had accumulated hundreds of billions of dollars in debt and began missing payments, eventually defaulting.
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