Evergrande: China’s epic property bubble hisses air

Evergrande, once the world’s most valuable real-estate group, is now the world's most indebted as China's epic property bubble starts to deflate.

Evergrande flats under construction in China
Evergrande has been struggling to service a $300bn debt pile
(Image credit: © JADE GAO/AFP via Getty Images )

Chinese property is in a “bubble of epic proportions”, says Matthew Brooker on Bloomberg. On some measures it “overshadows the pre-global financial crisis” boom in US housing valuations. In Shenzhen a flat costs 43.5 times the average annual salary, three times the figure for London. The market “stands comparison with the Japanese real estate bubble of the 1980s”, which inflicted a “lost decade” on the economy after it burst in 1990.

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Markets editor

Alex is an investment writer who has been contributing to MoneyWeek since 2015. He has been the magazine’s markets editor since 2019. 

Alex has a passion for demystifying the often arcane world of finance for a general readership. While financial media tends to focus compulsively on the latest trend, the best opportunities can lie forgotten elsewhere. 

He is especially interested in European equities – where his fluent French helps him to cover the continent’s largest bourse – and emerging markets, where his experience living in Beijing, and conversational Chinese, prove useful. 

Hailing from Leeds, he studied Philosophy, Politics and Economics at the University of Oxford. He also holds a Master of Public Health from the University of Manchester.