Casting your mind back to the China of 2003 almost feels like an exercise in historical fiction.
With an economy barely larger than Italy’s, it was still underdeveloped and isolated. Plagued by power shortages, a delinquent banking system and SARS — the brief coronavirus epidemic that resembled a trial run for COVID-19 — there was still little outward sign of the coming boom.
And yet the China of 2025 is oddly reminiscent of a generation ago. With a four-year real estate crash showing few signs of abating, construction of new housing is now back to the levels of the early 2000s. Just 132 million square meters of homes have been started in the four months through April, according to government data this week. That’s less than a third of the level before the crash began in 2021 and the lowest total since 2003.
With your current subscription plan you can comment on stories. However, before writing your first comment, please create a display name in the Profile section of your subscriber account page.