There's a huge cultural difference there though -- people don't trust stocks, bonds, or bank accounts. Housing is the only investment most people will consider.

There are old men who still remember their neighbors being dragged out of those houses, tried, and executed by Mao's kangaroo courts.

Most martial arts schools with ties to China have stories of expatriation or of practicing in the dark in basements.

All those houses bought in Vancouver aren't just about financial investments, they're also a potential bolt-hole if things get ugly again.

Also those houses are being bought with money being smuggled out of China. For all of the reasons that patio11 gives in https://www.bitsaboutmoney.com/archive/money-laundering-and-..., real estate is an excellent investment for money whose provenance you wish to be hard to discover.

This is a negative way to look at China's history.

As a Chinese-American, whose family and friends all profited greatly from China's rise, I do wonder, how much of that profit was just being lucky enough to support the "winning team," and how much blood was shed on the other side.

I guess the only true mindset is a neutral one.

We have a model for that in your birth country (American Civil War). But from my fractured knowledge of Chinese history, there's been a lot less backpedaling vis-a-vis the Civil War on ideological differences between the winning and losing side (and we mostly lament those as regression instead of progress).

In China, things have come back. People who escaped were invited back with promises of better treatment, even given platforms (eg, martial arts) but who knows what we Earthlings have lost from people who didn't. Biomechanics, biology, art, technology, philosophy...

Nor should they, cultural or not. Look how the government destroyed the Ant group recently. When they can unilaterally do that, how can you find a safe stock?

Land in China is all leased from the government, so there's no escaping government risk there without leaving the country

The Chinese situation is caused by government rather than by their culture. Chinese corporations are forced into inefficient state-mandated investments and provide meager rates of returns for shareholders. They get tons of shiny public infrastructure while savers are given nothing, and are not allowed to invest internationally. In other words, it is pure financial repression.

Sounds a lot like the US to me.

Housing in ghost cities doesn't count. Housing needs to be available where the jobs are.

I think it's time to reverse the equation: jobs have to be available where housing is!

In other words, we must learn how to improve the economy without turning the cities into antlers.

Why do you think that is?

I have an answer: there is nothing else to invest in for the average person.

When very few can purchase a luxury suit in a ghost city in china, the infra build costs were high, but the available buyer population is way fn low - its inverse to supply&demand when it comes to chinese real estate.

The buyers would have to fund ALL the infra to power, water, feed such ghost city homes, and where will they work?

I used to work with a guy in SF that had a consultancy that would bring chinese 'students' on tours of the US to various universities to have them pick where they wanted to go to school.

These were the children of chinese oligarchs - and they would land in SFO with luggage full of cash - and, not knowing how things worked in the US, would jusr bribe their way through every transaction at ~$10,000 a time...

The chinese oligarchs own more of america than you may know.