The Ferocious Rise and Quiet Struggle of China’s Country Garden

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[@chicanohek]

I lived and worked near their headquarters and rented a villa from their property management company. Top notch crooks, took my deposit, never fixed a thing, and constantly charged arbitrary “fees”. I shouldn’t feel happy that Country Garden is in turmoil but I do smirk.

[@markteeter-hw2lx]

really in line with the Walmart theme-

[@svenbjorn9700]

jesus...asianometry in beast mode lately

[@voidvector]

This was a topic briefly covered in my Econ class in university -- Where do your citizens park their wealth? And what consequence does that have? * US - middle class wealth is split between housing and retirement fund (stocks and bonds). This means US corporations have access to the 2nd part. So in effect, those wealth is helping private sector growth. * China - most of the middle class wealth is stored in housing, which has no value to private sectors outside of real estate. This also causes Chinese companies to seek funding elsewhere. This was an undergrad Econ class, so we didn't go into that much detail, but I am sure there are deeper studies on it.

[@ElectronFieldPulse]

I’ve always thought about it like this: You want an economic system that gets the most out of your population. One which gets people creating value is best. Investment is the easiest way to generalize the creation of value, and the US has benefited enormously by aligning incentives for its population to grow business. As the saying goes, the business of America is business

[@BringTheRains]

I hadn't thought about it that way. I would love to have a deeper explanation of this since your brief explanation makes sense.

It helps that the US has the rest of the world to help finance its government debt at very low interest rates. So the rest of American capital can be used more productively.

[@DBGE001]

Every penny that a citizen has parked on his or her simple savings account can and will be leveraged to be used as loans by the private banks towards the private industry. A typical leverage factor of 10 is used for all types of savings.

[@Avantime]

Not nearly enough for both US govt borrowing as well as stocks and corporate bond markets - The key is the USD's reserve currency status. Banks everywhere have to trade in USD, and they want access electronically in an instant. That almost always means investing in US Treasuries and other American liquid assets. This pushes down yields on those assets, meaning retirement funds, insurers and other savers must chase yields in the riskier parts of the markets - Stocks, Bonds, ABS etc. The average American has very little savings, but this arrangement, thanks to the USD's reserve currency status, solves a lot of issues. China has lots of savings, both corporate and individual. China has capital controls so can restrict the money that leaves the country, and so investment options are limited. China's financial markets are still very much 'wild west' from accounting and governance standards to the rule of law, so they either park it in savings accounts (which goes to the govt via bank purchases) or better, brick and mortar, if not for themselves then as buy-to-let landlords. Those savings gets distributed as bank loans to the corporate world, supplying the debt market. For established players getting money is no problem, but like everywhere else those without connections or clout gets the shaft. That's how those bloated real estate developers get so bloated, until the 'three red lines'.

[@brunosardine1]

I was initially worried seeing it was a 30+ minute video, but wow I never even paused that this was really insightful

[@serena-yu]

No one can walk away from a Chinese mortgage although the pre-sold building is unfinished, or even not started at all. You actually start paying for the mortgage before the building project commences. According to Chinese laws, the mortgage is your business with the bank, whereas the house is your business with the builder. The bank doesn't care about a dodgy builder and you have to pay the mortgage regardless. Only death can cease your mortgage.

[@janneyovertheocean9558]

On that last sentence of your comment: that’s why scores of poor debt bearing and no alternative mortgage owners chose to kill themselves - so tragic and so pathetic a government they unfortunately had to live under!

[@indianatarzan8001]

China also has no personal bankruptcy laws, so they can't even do that as a last resort. I do recall they were talking about adding that a while back but haven't heard of any new development.

[@Avantime]

@@janneyovertheocean9558 They always have a choice, home ownership isn't a human right. Same thing for South Korea and Japan well, a lot of people choose to let go after the 1980s Japanese bubble burst, and the 1997 Asian Financial Crisis. It's called negative equity.

[@mattbland2380]

Mortgage literally means ‘death debt’ so it’s no surprise.

[@fredinit]

@@AvantimeHome ownership isn't a human right, but housing is.

[@tomhalla426]

This looks like a peculiarly Chinese way to replay the Japanese real estate crash. Having customers effectively finance the projects only moves the credit risk even more acute.

[@Theoryofcatsndogs]

well, in many cases the developers use the money to help other unrelated project, like stadium, EV, etc. Or they just pocket money.

[@ZETA14.88]

a very juvenile obsevation. Japan never had only real estate crash, it was both stock market AND real estate crashes. You also failed to mention the primary cause, namely Plaza Accord and US's demand for stronger Yen vs USD to cover for their consistent trade deficit

[@jarjarbinks3193]

​@@ZETA14.88 I am afraid, laying the blame for Japan's downturn on the Plaza Accord is just a favourite CCP fanbase "talking" point. The real reason was the deflation of the massive bubble that had formed in both its housing and stock markets. What China is undergoing now is just a mega version of the same.

[@nottera]

That’s the same way many companies work in Brazil, credit here is very expensive, demand is high and it’s rare for a project to stay still

[@ZETA14.88]

@@jarjarbinks3193 deflation caused by inflation caused by financial liberalization demanded by plaza accord caused by weak yen causing trade deficit vs united states

[@syjiang]

"why no harvard..." True asian dad moment 😆

[@JustThinkingAboutIt]

Sounds like my Nigerian dad lol

[@Theoryofcatsndogs]

My mom bought an apartment from them in the early years. It is not bad. The security actually check everyone when the enter the property. This is actually pretty rare in china at that time. It has school and even has a small Chinese hospital in it, the reason my mom bought it.

[@janneyovertheocean9558]

She was very fortunate in those days where honesty and quality were still important in people’s mind and as moral compass.

[@defeatSpace]

@@user-yk1cw8im4h ehh, the remaining bridges from ancient dynasties would disagree with you and the PRC

[@causewaykayak]

​@@user-yk1cw8im4h What does that mean. Are you insulting China ?

[@causewaykayak]

​ That was taking too much for granted. Why do idiots on ut give off about people they cant know. First sign of bull headed stupidity. You should perhaps re-read before publishing. Your remark was essentially a cryptic throwaway, a Cat Call - and not clear. Learn to express yourself.

[@causewaykayak]

@@user-yk1cw8im4h You seem to be saying that China lacked honesty and quality but did not say that explicitly. I'd say you just insulted a vast number of people. Your contribution appears to be just a slack jawed cat-call. Perhaps you should express yourself more clearly.

[@kyoxilbuzz]

I live at Phoenix country garden GZ, since 2008. And my wife is from Shunde, this little town that must have more Porshe and Mercedes than the whole of Germany. Really funny to hear about places you know.

[@MrFredscrap]

Just came back from China attending a number of construction trade shows in Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou (all happens in March). The shows are smaller this year than previous years (even pre-covid), there is a sense of doom among some of them, espceially in the Aluminium window indusry, which had discussion forums on "how to survive the current climate".

[@champan250]

This is a nice outsider's overview on this clusterfck. However, your two videos on this topic are missing a lot of critical details on this crazy up and down between 2014-2022. This wild ride was made possible by the red-hot China's offshore USD bond market while equity/stock played only a very small role. It was hard to research given financial news media tailored to stock investors and China property evolved to mainly serving the fixed income side. To give you a sense, there were US$180Bn of offshore China property bonds defaulted in 2021-23, more than 10x more than these developers ever raised from the equity market across the past 20 years, Evergrande and Country Garden only accounted for 10-12% of it. Also another 30-40Bn of syndicated loan from HK based banks or bank branches. Couple things you might want to research more for your next video on this topic: 1) 2014 saw the first series of measures to cool the market. It set up the escrow account system that developers supposed to put the pre-sales proceeds into (this never enforced by the banks until after Evergrande defaulted in 2H2021). More importantly at that time, China banned banks to lend to developers directly for land acquisition. So from that point onward, developers sought offshore USD bond issuances and onshore shadow banking to fund land purchases, and the bond market and shadow banking market also went crazy at that time, so a lot of money was flow into these leading property firms to buy tons of land. 2) at around 2017, a second round of cooling measures came with a rumor calling for banks to only lend to the top 50 developers on construction loan, hoping to reduce exposure on those smaller and weaker developers. However, this inevitably set up a mad dash to try to grow their scale exponentially. Those ranking in top 30-50 had to double in size each year to maintain their ranking. The ranking is done by "gross proceeds" disregarding the attributable ratio, so these developers started to get creative, either forming JVs among themselves on projects and everyone count the full sales to their ranking, or they start selling minority shareholding to shadow banking players like trust products, insurance funds, etc that provide guaranteed return or put option. Effectively an equity-linkes debt instrument on these minority interest. Balance sheet began to deteriorated rapidly with many hidden debts that are not shown in the financials. More importantly, during this mad dash period, these developers are buying lands in less desirable areas that they chose to buy just to maintain its scale. These undesirable projects are mainly where we are seeing construction halt, ghost town etc nowadays. 3) The Three Red Lines was only a headline grabbing policy and looking back, it didn't really impacting the developers. The banks can't really lend to them anymore anyways so 3 Red Lines didn't really matter. What's most important around 2020 was, China already cracked down on shadow banking and already a few credit events start popping up (like China Fortune Land) and developers already needed to start desperately coming up with funds to repay these shadow banking. They bought themselves 1-2 years of extra time after securing extra financing in Hong Kong's private credit market. These private debts were not disclosed to equity shareholders nor public bond investors, containing additional terms that were not offered to public bondholders 4) The final straw on the camal was not the 3 Red Lines nor Evergrande, but rather two self-fulfilling prophecy and self-policing risk management that triggered the avalanche. Following Evergrande's default, China regulators wanted to find out whether all the money sitting in the escrow accounts across the banking system is sufficient for Evergrande to finish all the projects under construction. Because as long as all the projects can be delivered, Evergrande can just wind down and who's care about foreign bondholders losing US$ bonds. This opened up a Pandora's box. Not just Evergrande, everyone, I literally mean every developers, do not put enough money in the escrow account despite the policy was introduced in 2014. The banks knowingly allowing the developers to take out money from escrow accounts for their next projects. With rumors saying regulators want to penalize the banks and investigate what is the exact shortfall in escrow account in each bank, it set up a mad rush for banks to freeze up developers bank accounts to fill the escrow account holes. This strain in liquidity triggered Moody's S&P and Fitch, these rating agencies to start downgrading offshore bonds. Most HK private credit bonds carry a put option clause when the developers got downgraded, forcing them to repay immediately. These two basically vanished all the cash balance and liquidity all these developers had. An avalanche of developers defaulting in 2022, with a few "better" ones dragged onto and defaulting 2023. There were only a few left standing right now only because they were conservative during that 2014-2021 and ironically were the one being criticizing for growing too slow during that period For example, cifi grew 10x in scale between 2014-2021 and died in 2022, country garden onlh grew 6x and died in 2023. If one play attention to the month-to-month property sales numbers on each developer, it was the property developers who defaulted first (or news of them at risk of defaulting hitting mass media) that led to a collapse of this developer's property sales, instead of the common narrative that a collapse of property sales triggering these developers to default. (The latter was the common excuses company and investors made to blame the govt policy instead of themselves enabling the crazy madness since 2014) I hope the above will help your research.

[@F3arlessWarriorMindset]

Thanks for adding background 😊

[@user-lc8yc4cq5n]

That final conclusion, "the Chinese real estate industry isn't going anywhere" was a nice double entendre.

[@alexhubble]

12:25 "close interaction with local government" did that intonation convey what I think it does? Thought so 👍

[@willywonka4340]

lol😂

[@cmLMolde]

As a norwegian I was like "oh that's nice, they saw common ground on the benefits of the development"

[@xiphoid2011]

​@cmLMolde in China, government jobs comes with unlisted benefits. My uncle was a minor official in a city's civil engineering bureau. Before he retired, people always came knocking on the weekends baring gifts. 😅

[@CaffeineGeek]

"Why no Harvard?" made me LOL.

[@janneyovertheocean9558]

May be the deliberately humble minded founder Mr. Yang wanted to keep his image of humble, lowly class origin of himself ? Or because he didn’t have enough cash to donate large enough sum to money-hungry Harvard University, esp since he certainly was not an alumni of that highest end university? Or maybe his daughter did not have the necessary grade of GPA, SAT score or extracurricular activities to give her an edge ? Who knows. But OSH is certainly good enough if her father Mr. Yang had not been so aggressive and careless in his pursuit of ever bigger success.

[@CaffeineGeek]

@@janneyovertheocean9558 A bit of explanation. There is a joke among Asians whenever a child announces what college or university they will be attending. It can be a top tier school such as Stanford, Oxford, John Hopkins, University of Munich, UC Berkeley or a well regard school like Ohio State and the parents will always respond with "Why no Harvard?"

[@nick21614]

@@CaffeineGeek True, Ohio State does have a top tier business school though

[@CCRoselle]

Using today's receipts to cover losing project debts is sometimes called riding the rolling monster. A misstep and you are eaten by the monster. More than a few take that chance, very few get out alive.

[@lateralus6512]

Sort of like a Ponzi scheme. It keeps going as long is new money flows in and the business keeps expanding. But it inevitably has an expiration date.

[@javaks]

His incentives remind me of Glengarry Glen Ross

[@-gg8342]

Always be closing

[@gslidevideotester8592]

14:51 The statement says nothing about fictional. It says that the content of the book requires partial editing, and its publication has been delayed.

[@stevebabiak6997]

Thanks - most of us can’t read or understand that language.

[@Izquierda]

Noticed this too, kinda strange editorial decision given that the Asionometry author is supposedly Taiwanese and can read Chinese text.

[@2tothe253]

Note what is shown is the statement from the publisher CITIC, not the author (look at the letterhead, and dated 2018-01-08). The author (Wu) indeed stated the book was a work of fictional literature which is not entirely factual (IIRC the author's statement was made in the evening of 2018-03-01 Beijing time).

[@waitingforparts57]

Thank you for providing a great overview of this company and of the crisis. You brought clarity to the headlines we saw in the US news. But we did not learn the background as you provided. Thank you

[@EyesOfByes]

13:44 So he pulled an SBF.

[@ChadLuciano]

the ol' sneaky sammy move

[@Urgelt]

In a ponzi scheme, money scammed from later investors pays off earlier investors, with owners taking cuts of every transaction. I can't help but see the Chinese real estate business model as similar. Early consumers get what they paid for. Later consumers get stuck holding the bag. By some estimates, China overbuilt housing by so much that another billion people would be needed to fill all of the units. This was possible because consumers bought multiple units - one to live in, others to speculate, expecting prices to keep rising. But oversupply is not conducive to rising prices. And the ponzi character of the business left many consumers stuck with mortgages secured by literally nothing. Real estate in China is collapsing. I don't share your optimism about Country Garden finishing those million unfinished units. They're at the point where, in a ponzi scheme, the originators milk the last sad drops of profits from consumers with optimistic forecasts and promises, while starting to execute their wind-down, stashing wealth where the state and creditors won't find it. Bankruptcy is ahead. Other factors cratering demand for upscale housing are in play - especially foreign capital flight and joblessness. And bank runs. And local government out-of-control debt. And sanctions. And defaults on Belt and Road debts. And rising military expenditures as a percentage of GDP. And a trade war with the West. And workers not being paid for work. China is staggering towards an uncertain future. You expect recovery. I expect horror.

[@lateralus6512]

I agree. This mess looks monumentally worse than the Japanese real estate bubble and eventual crash.

[@tictacdude3468]

@@lateralus6512There really isn’t a comparison. Total debt creation within China over the last 20 years is off the charts - almost an order of magnitude of the US over the same period. For better or worse, we won’t really know what it’ll look like until it happens.

[@lateralus6512]

@@tictacdude3468 The crash has already happened, and it’s monumental in size. The Real Estate sector is deflating.

[@Avantime]

@@lateralus6512 I don't think you understood how bad the Japanese real estate bubble was. At its height the imperial palace in Tokyo was worth more than all the land in California.

[@Avantime]

@@tictacdude3468 Like Japan, Chinese debt is almost always held by Chinese nationals domestically. But unlike Japan they have capital controls, plus they control the money printers, and a currency devaluation makes Chinese exports cheaper, at times potentially overcoming the tariff costs.

[@southwestedc]

Asianometry maybe on a second channel or something please give a research/overview of how you research its crazy how rounded and detailed your overviews are

[@stevenliew2507]

Your summary of Country Garden Projects in Malaysia is not correct. Country Garden undertook Danga Bay Development in Johor Baru mostly from reclaimation of land from the sea - Lido Beach. The reclaimed land was 75 acres. It was during the development of the Danga Bay Project that the sea reclaimation of 5000 acres of land from the sea that formed Forest City Development Land. There are more details than what the author of this video narrated.

[@baashi3578]

That map at 32:04 makes me wonder if that is the common rendition in China. Awesome stuff as always.

[@danosdotnl]

Very common to see models like this

[@BR-hi6yt]

Property crash? - you ain't seen nothing yet. A money vacuum pump.

[@rapier5]

I think China's leaders are sufficiently cynical to have known from the start that huge bankruptcies, that is unpaid debt, that is deflation of financial assets would ensue. However the cities would now be there. The money, ie. the debt is gone, poof, but you've got a city. The questions are. 1- is the construction any good or how bad is it? 2- Is it being maintained? I have one vision of these cities doing well in 50 years. Another of dystopian nightmare scenes.

[@Avantime]

A lot of those bottom-rung city developments are doomed. While people used to joke about the Ordos ghost town the place eventually got filled with residents, however the scale this time is much bigger. With real estate it's always "location, location, location" - there's a ton of real estate development needed in the top cities like Shanghai, as many older buildings are unfit for modern human habitation and should be demolished. But greenfield development in the middle of nowhere will rarely be successful.

[@TheFirebird123456]

In general quality is worse than west. The land use lease is for 70 years so why build something to last longer than that. Second cutting corners everywhere usually causes defects. Engineers have a saying: quality, cost, speed pick 2. Fast and high quality work equals greater cost as you need more manpower to finish the same amount of work. Low cost and fast usually means cut corners and quality defects.

[@ShhhHhhhz]

Amazing stuff! These type of content is hard to come by in the english speaking world. Unlike bots churning out the 4295th video about Enron.

[@ricardokowalski1579]

I was waiting for this topic.

[@diffore]

Amazing video as always

[@sokolmihajlovic1391]

Great vid, as always, ty buddy.

[@nagasako7]

Currently Chinese real estate is still deleveraging. USA basically took its knocks all at once in 2007. Instead of sharp decline in prices Chinese huge shock, They maybe going for murky lost decade.

[@Emilien-hy3sy]

lmao, how delusional! They basicaly fixed the real estate problem already. They took a lot of measures, and today it only takes 20% of GDP compared to 30%+ a few years ago.

[@henrytep8884]

@@Emilien-hy3syyou don’t simply fix a real estate problem especially one the size of China

[@johnbanwell6391]

One of the best KZbin channels, Asianometry

[@tsoekc]

One more thing you can mention is the unwllingness of local banks to provide loans to developers despite recent policy easing with project whitelists

[@champan250]

Developers do not lack construction loan, what they lack are holding company or mezzanine loan to repay those trust products, shadow banking and offshore syndicated loan and USD bonds.... And why banks should lend to them if the residue equity value of these projects are zero? Project whitelist is for project level loan and only in holdco investor's dream that they can even upstream a penny up from project level We can all blame the govt for this, but this is also the case for every real estate projects in the rest of the world

[@someb0dy2]

23:50 you mentioned Mahathir as the President of Malaysia. Malaysia has no Presidental office. Mahathir was the Prime Minister. Anyway Forest City is linked to Malaysian royalty, so I guess it will survive one way or another.

[@dmacpher]

Your content pipeline is dialed. Really impressive output man 🫡

[@meevil24]

Looking forward to learning about something I'd never heard of before

[@janneyovertheocean9558]

Learning more about these excesses in China’s real estate business which had become an even bigger bubble ensuring to burst than the one blown up by Japan 30-some yrs ago. With one MILLION of unfinished but already sold and bank mortgage debt incurred buyers who are already paying their monthly mortgage to the bank, with an overall RE market 20-40% off their purchasing price, I.e. under water, guess who are going to suffer most with this huge Ma made debacle - and this situation developed in spite of the Japanese’ lost generation lesson right in front of their eyes. Who can they blame except the greedy and all-controlling communist government of China? You will learn a lot more if you and your peers learn more about why a big and autocratic government, esp one that literally own all the land of the nation and ‘lease’ them to construction company like Country Garden, thus eventually own the apartment houses’ land as landlord for 70 years - then can come back to charge whatever amount to those unlucky ‘renters of land’ from the government for another 70? years (if this crazy and unrighteous, all controlling communist party is still in power !! ) There are millions more units of outstanding unfinished residential units which the ‘owners’ already poured in down payment and paying monthly checks to the bank, some for years now because their particular builders had gone bust !! We don’t appreciate how deceitful and dishonest a government can be till we learn what happened to these poor Chinese house buyers, some of them were forced to move in these unfinished homes - no electricity, no running water, no working elevator, no windows (!), etc. because they have no money left to rent a real apartment home after let obligated to pay the bank ! Such is the way Communist Chinese government, so called [People’s Republic of China] treat their people. Thank God for America, for we at least have a real Constitution and respect private ownership, rule of law and an elected representative Congress to kind of supervise the POTUS, as old as Biden is or as crazy as Trump is ……. How we ended up the choices in 11/2024 should be a scary and sobering thing for us to deeply ponder!

[@chrimony]

I've seen videos where the concrete in some projects is literally crumbling. I know there have been a few disasters of late, but I'm surprised there's not an epidemic of buildings falling down, given the extreme push to get buildings done as fast as possible.

[@stevebabiak6997]

“Tofu dreg”

[@janneyovertheocean9558]

There has been 3 incidents of school gym’s roof collapsing without warning but under stupid situations (which I have no time to get into), all showing the poor design, poor quality and get-rich at any cost mentality of both construction companies and the lack of responsible, professionally accountable local government regulation in the communist controlled ‘land of the people’.

[@davidradtke160]

Ehhh how do you know there isn’t an epidemic? No free press, a lot can easily be hidden.

[@LuisAldamiz]

It's not a question of "fast" as much as of "cost": cheaper low quality concrete (aluminium polluted and such) is used (illegally) for lowering the costs.

[@chrimony]

@@LuisAldamiz "Fast" leads to cutting corners. Would doing it proper involve waiting for a test to come back? Then don't wait, charge ahead! Notice a problem that would take time to fix? Don't fix it, cover it up, and charge ahead! (This happened in the FIU bridge collapse.) Or don't do tests, in the name of saving time. On and on it goes.

[@Tgspartnership]

its still astounding the extent to which the Chinese have changed themselves and the world around them

[@railgun2020]

This was fascinating!

[@marsmotion]

high growth is also high risk. nothing lasts forever.

[@goldnutter412]

Very interesting, cheers.. long term outlook for humanity looks better every day

[@Drone_Depopulation_Gaming]

Great video!

[@Mesozoic_mammal]

You can only go all-in so many times.

[@ajzmn3538]

7:35 "Concierse" - MONEY PLANE

[@Nope_handlesaretrash]

Guy got rich selling tofu dreg corn cob sh*t boxes to new money Chinese. Amazing.

[@weewillywonga]

​@@peterseth3296 smells like CCP cope.

[@MatthewDoye]

Fascinating and utterly different from western models.

[@dirthgr]

Jon...some insight re your question about what would happen to mortgage holders who fall behind--or worse--in payments as they become underwater in their investments...(minute 30:45). May I suggest you check out China's social credit scheme (if you have not already...) This may leave them with few good options apart from continuing payment...until such time as changes may be made to it. I have no expertise there, but suspect it might be a persuasive factor. Rgds.

[@Miguel-ly4bm]

I worked that school and the structure of the whole school was terrible. The foreign department was run by bunch of lazy foreigners, with no oversight. They were reluctant to actually teach. the heads of the pyp weren't licensed. It was bad, the usual excuse for not teaching was "do you want to do extra work?". They are still there, it is a joke.

[@fminc]

One of the greatest channels on youtube. Thanks for your work.

[@rajTrondhjem10]

I needed to know this..

[@alexhubble]

OK, one thought strikes. If you buy a share in this company, you are just betting management can keep spinning the plates. If they do, you get a dividend. If they don't there's nothing. Nothing but a big pile of debt. You don't get a choice in management, btw. I suppose this is the case with every business but this case seems particularly stark. Brutal, even.

[@gregsoul]

I lived in a CG apartment - that was made of plastic. Honestly - the water tap was made of plastic. The furniture was made of the cheapest pine. Nice from far, from from nice.

[@SvenSteffenArndt]

Maybe you should do books out of your videos - content ist really great!

[@accessiblenow]

Great as always

[@user-wq4fb7zt8y]

Lol

[@joeleonard9965]

I got an IB Diploma in HS lmao. So weird seeing that come up in one of these videos

[@watchm4ker]

It's fairly widespread for "international" schools, where students are expecting to seek work or attend higher education outside of the country.

[@joeleonard9965]

@@watchm4ker Which surprises me because I did it at a public school in Ohio.

[@watchm4ker]

@@joeleonard9965 It's not... unknown, but it's fairly uncommon in the US, since the SAT is preferred for US Colleges and Universities. Where there a lot of foreign students? Did many go off to study abroad?

[@joeleonard9965]

@@watchm4ker It was just local highschool students who went to my school anyways. Was only 15 or so people but the years after me were much larger. Other students can enroll in the classes but you have to do only IB courses for the last two years and pass the exams to get the diploma. It is a pretty nice area so the public highschools have pretty ambitious teachers who are willing to take on the extra work.

[@leeswecho]

@@joeleonard9965public school in NC here. But omg IB took like five years off my life

[@el4266]

As someone who follows Chinese news closely, the Chinese estate is only half way. At its peak, the Chinese estate markets and its up/downs stream counted for 30% of the GDP. With all the political and economical indicators going down, who is able to supply that mount of money?

[@markfoo567]

Forest City is built entirely on reclaimed land next to western part of Singapore, with a lot of environmental concerns.

[@F3arlessWarriorMindset]

16:32 time will tell whether Country Garden had compromised building safety standards in its relentless drive to build at breakneck speeds. Country Garden property buyers should insist to confirm whether safety certificates issued by the relevant authorities were granted only after extensive testing. 😮

[@calvin10]

Thanks for leaving the biggest ghost town ever in my country. I dont fucking appreciate that. The marine ecosystem is ruined and my disappointment is immeasurable towards my government.

[@nagasako7]

Their OST is intro part of Wham - Wake Me Up Before You Go Go

[@theant4268]

Hey I work at WalMart, could you do a video on our distribution systems?

[@frankchan4272]

Interesting there are Walmarts in China so that would be interesting to see.

[@sigmundhoenigsberg5105]

to your point, Chinese laws on mortgage default are completely different than the US ..that's why the debtors are so resilient. Basically if you default you become a financial pariah ...and your children do too (!!) .

[@greggc.touftree5936]

When the cars drive by your flat it makes the documentary seem so calm. I can't believe how tuned in and relaxed I was in the first 2 minutes.

[@tom23rd]

When will real estate and financial companies stop using "Country..." In their names? Countrywide, country gardens etc 😅

[@axb6061]

5:38, yes Shunde BGY very likely. Source: me

[@RonJohn63]

Is Yang the family name? (I know that Chinese put the family name first, but I've also seen it put last for Westerners.)

[@DAH-ss1nu]

I wonder if that extreme speed in construction is what has led to the 'tofu-dreg' claims of widespread ultra-shoddy chinese construction.

[@lakrids-pibe]

I beg your pardon, ♪ I never promised you a country garden ♬♫ Along with the sunshine ♫ there's gotta be a little rain sometime ♩

[@merlinious01]

31:00 Chinese debt laws are FAR less forgiving than US laws. You cannot walk away. If you get foreclosed on and they sell the house for cheap, you still owe the difference on the loan. No personal bankruptcy. Failure to pay can end in jail time.

[@Ruteger100]

60 million Chinese people in prison?

[@digigoliath]

Interesting video. I should point out though that Malaysia does not have a president. Mahatir was the Prime Minister.

[@user-yh7sv1xs8u]

This was excellent, thank you. Chinese companies will eventually institute Governance, Risk Management & Compliance measures, but it will take time. A generation (or two).

[@anushagr14]

Could you make a video on dali foods

[@glennac]

Unfortunately, this speed race for completion of projects meant corner-cutting at every level of construction to squeeze as much profit out of each venture. This resulted in occupants taking possession of homes and apartments that were already crumbling on day one. Sure, Country Garden targeted the upperclass. But so many copycat companies thought they could replicate CG’s success targeting the middle class. What folks ended up with were junk homes they had poured their life savings into or whole projects that never were finished and later bulldozed. 😢

[@1873Winchester]

Opened this video expecting a video about gardening.

[@jackman00110101]

I thought this was going to be about gardening stores lol

[@popcorn6931]

I’d like to see many more country garden type failures coming out of China. These things are hush hush and not a lot is known. Possible ideas include how much Blackrock lost money before pulling out of china😂

[@ChairmanMo]

All of these Real Estate tycoons should be forced to hand over their fortunes and be forced to live like everyone else because of what they did. These tycoons ripped off bond holders, suppliers, workers and etc.

[@thomasburchsted3287]

It’s unbelievable that all of this true, and actually happened.

[@workingproleinc.676]

15:09 Imaooo😂😂😂

[@Merle1987]

I didn't even know there were tier five and tier six cities. I've gotta look that up. Your conclusion is rather bunk though. Doubling down on something that is a catastrophic failure will just multiple the catastrophe.

[@LuisAldamiz]

The RS speculation has brought China to the same place the West (especially USA, Britain and Spain) were in 2008 (and still are after not allowing the bubble to burst): low natality as the cost of life has skyrocketed and a growing amount of working class people can barely pay for survival. I was yesterday arguing with a pro-Chinese "communist" in another channel about how, since Deng, as this video succintly explains, China has become a fully fledged capitalist country and he/she claimed that China still has "political socialism", which I rejected because on Marxist grounds there's no such thing: it's all about the property structure, either it is collectivist (communist or hardcore socialist) or it is private (capitalist) and thus China is also politically capitalist even if it keeps a decreasing amount of political-cultural residuals from the Mao epoch. Anyway, I disagree with the conclusion: with the last peak of Chinese demographics being already well in their 30s and with a extremely narrow 20s segment (caused by capitalist speculation), the housing bubble in China is also doomed, as much as in the West. The timeline may be slightly different but nowadays housing is NOT "for living": it is largely a "value store" for the capitalists to put their money in and nothing else. This is and has been for way too long destructive of societies across the world and is eating itself (because speculative capital is very improductive) at lograrithmically accelerating pace. It's gonna blow.

[@shepardsinsequence]

Dam. They kinda have their hands in everything

[@F3arlessWarriorMindset]

17:55 “the Forest City I developed in Malaysia is something nobody would dare to conceive”. 😂😂😂. Yeah it’s one mega huge white elephant in Malaysia, highly recommend if you want to live in a private housing estate with few neighbours and lots of personal space for yourself 😂😂😂

[@biometal770]

Nice!

[@johnboon4731]

WITH ONLY A LITTLE EDUCATION CAN’T GO FAR AND LONG ESPECIALLY PROPERTY THE FORMULA OF “BUYING HIGH AND SELL HIGHER” CANT ‘T LAST LONG. WITH HIS ATTITUDE IT ALREADY TELL YOU THAT HIS SUCCESS COME FROM IMMORAL WAYS AND FINALLY THE COMPANY WILL BANKRUPT BUT MOST LIKELY A LOT A LOT OF MONEY HAD BEEN SIPHONED ALREADY.🙈🙈🙈

[@douginorlando6260]

How is taking money from a real estate buyer and using that money to build the previous buyer’s real estate not considered a Ponzi scheme?

[@roc7880]

some day economists will say these were just growing pains. equally, they might say it was the start of the collapse of the Chinese model.

[@i6power30]

I think China will get through this real estate rout and emerge as lean and mean as ever.

[@binjinhwang]

Nice video. I think China is repeating the mistake Japan made in the 1980s. But now, I wonder if China will lost decades of growth like Japan or it will re-vitalize its economy in a much shorter period of time. I wonder if you would like to make a video to share your thought on that.

[@peteblazar5515]

Isn't it only lease of land for 85 years?

[@syjiang]

70

[@pacificatoris9307]

Can an individual own land? What does one owns?

[@Philfluffer]

Wow, Yaong is so humble………………

[@gamesharkme]

They are building entire GTA maps.

[@tsoekc]

Looks like Vanke will be the next domino to fall in this Chinese prop crisis

[@wmk4454]

Vanke is interesting but can't find any info on it

[@user-ry7sl1eu6l]

kulang pa yan. patuloy na pagdating ng kagalitan ng Diyos sa mga intsik.

[@F3arlessWarriorMindset]

13:23 lol, Yang Guoqiang refuses to let his business ambitions be limited by practical realities, just like how Xi Jinping believes he’s China’s top economic guru 😂

[@lateralus6512]

Excellent video, but I disagree with the optimism near the end. This Chinese real estate crash will be monumental in scale. It represents extreme mal investment that will take multiple generations to correct.

[@ddegn]

I agree with your assessment. There isn't an endless market for real estate. There are already way more homes than people to buy them.

[@elucidatedvoyyd]

wait you mean to tell me people buy apartments in china instead of renting? and they get maintanence and services? are they mortgaged? im sure ill soon hear of the issues, but the idea of buying an apartment is so weird to me

[@haenselundgretel654]

The owner of CountryGarden is the prototype of a hardcore psychopath.

[@thebandofbastards4934]

The man who was poor but then became rich can be more ruthless than the one who was just born rich

[@ElectronFieldPulse]

Does anyone know what this guys background is? Where he grew up? What his job is? He seems very informed on Asia obviously, and I’ve wondered if he has a job which requires him to work with or from Asia.

[@randomhuman5525]

Taiwanase

[@gohanssj48]

He"s a Taiwanese-American who lives in Taiwan, and his father worked in Semiconductor industry.

[@seeker4430]

Whose girls dance group is better Evergrande or Country Garden?