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Since 1992 when the "ghost cities" meme began China gained 300 million people and it is still growing.

• inglor_cz 3y ago
  China is no longer growing and actually lost 2 million people year-to-year recently. Given that it is mostly the younger cohort that seeks new housing - older people tend to settle somewhere for the rest of their lives - I don't really see the demand picking up again.
  • maxglute 3y ago
    PRC is still urbanizing ("growing"). Old people from rural PRC gets "resettled". PRC trying to urbanize from 65%->80%/85%. They're going to have to if they want any services anyway. Most of the excess housing just right outside of cities. That's 200-300m people that still needs urban dwellings. Current excess square footage enough 100-150m people, about 10 years of headroom. This is without accounting for deprecated housing stock. Yes reality of speculation and (mis)allocation is much messier, but PRC is still 100-150m short on urban housing. For reference 80% urbanized US is short on ~6M homes, that's 2% relative to population. PRC is short 7-10% relative to urbanization targets and popluation.
    • jeffbee 3y ago
      100%, thanks for writing it down. You'll also want to keep in mind that aging nations continue to require more homes even as their populations shrink.