Shannon Brandao
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"Kevin Slaten and Ming-tse Hung, Nikkei Asia [excerpt]: #China's #property sector, which accounts for more than a quarter of #Asia's largest #economy, has fallen into an unprecedented crisis.
Investment and property sales by volume last month were both 11% lower than a year earlier and home prices in most cities fell, too. Two of the country's largest developers, China Evergrande Group and Country Garden Holdings, have defaulted on their borrowings, as have many smaller peers. Suppliers, contractors and construction workers have gone unpaid for months while millions of homebuyers who plowed their savings into purchases in planned but unfinished projects have been left to twist in the wind.
The result of this tumult has been a steep rise in protests. Despite the efforts of the Chinese Communist Party (#CCP), Freedom House's China Dissent Monitor project tallied 1,777 demonstrations linked to the property sector between June 2022 and October 2023.
Two-thirds of these events involved #homebuyers and #homeowners raising issues like project delays, contract violations, alleged fraud and shoddy workmanship. Most of the remaining demonstrations were initiated by #construction workers demanding unpaid wages.
Most of these events included dozens of participants, who typically held up banners or chanted at a strategic location, such as the entrance to a company sales office or the office gates of the local government. Individual protests usually lasted anywhere from a couple hours to a full day before participants obtained some sort of promise or were dispersed by police or company guards.
Although the national government has taken a series of measures over the past year to support the property market, including additional financing and easier debt-repayment rules for developers, this has not curbed popular discontent.
Around 50 to 70 demonstrations are now occurring monthly, though August saw about 100 worker-led protests, three times as many as the same month a year earlier. Since June 2022, demonstrations have occurred in 276 cities nationwide.
The protests have been somewhat concentrated in wealthier cities, particularly #Shenzhen, Xi'an and #Zhengzhou, and together have involved tens of thousands of people."
#news