For any government, overhauling a nationwide residential real estate market would be risky under the best of circumstances. Chinese President Xi Jinping is attempting it at a time when the economy is slowing, omicron is threatening his "COVID zero" policy and relations with the outside world are increasingly fraught.
As that perilous combination takes a growing toll on Chinese financial markets, one question keeps popping up: What is Xi’s endgame?
Given the Chinese Communist Party’s opacity and its history of backtracking on property reforms, the answer is impossible to know for sure. But China watchers have begun sketching out a likely future for the real estate market that looks far different from its more than two-decade run of supercharging economic growth, household wealth and government revenue.