China has an excess supply of one commodity that the US needs but can’t import, not because of tariffs or trade wars, but because shipping costs would be prohibitive: China has more than seven billion square feet of unoccupied housing in the country, the equivalent of more than 7.2 million average homes, CNN reports.
The excess stock has led to a prolonged two-year slump in China’s normally robust property markets. A number of prominent real estate developers are teetering on the edge of bankruptcy because of the debts incurred carrying vacant properties.
“How many vacant homes are there now? Each expert gives a very different number, with the most extreme believing the current number of vacant homes are enough for 3 billion people,” said He Keng, 81, a former deputy head of the statistics bureau. “That estimate might be a bit much, but 1.4 billion people probably can’t fill them.”