China mortgage boycott data erased by censors as crisis spreads

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The censoring is so horrible that Chinese are using other country&#x27;s name to substitute China. For example, there is a question in Zhihu, &quot;Will China become the next technological powerhouse?&quot;. The answer is talking about Russia literally, but it&#x27;s about China. (Below is the answer translated by deepl).<p>I don&#x27;t want to talk about China, I want to talk about Russia.<p>Can Russia become the next technological powerhouse? Of course not.<p>Because the ceiling of Russian intelligence or wisdom is Putin. There is no one in Russia who can claim to be more intelligent than Putin. Russia can do without anyone, but not without Putin. Although we do not know whether Putin has any relevant qualifications or experience in the industry, all Russian businesses and professions depend on Putin&#x27;s guidance and must hold up Putin&#x27;s ideas and banners, otherwise they will not be able to move forward. Putin is the ceiling of Russia. How can a country with a ceiling become a technological powerhouse?<p>Look at the United States. Who dares to direct the work of Musk, whether Trump or Biden? Who dares to direct the business strategies of Apple and Google? I find that in the US, it seems that anyone can say they are smarter than the president, it seems that anyone can say they are smarter than the president. The technology companies in the US seem to be able to run smoothly without the guidance of Biden&#x27;s ideas, and they seem to be able to develop technology without raising the banner of Biden&#x27;s ideas, and they seem to be doing quite well. I find that the US is a country that has no ceiling in terms of intelligence or ingenuity, and that is always improving. Only such a country can become a technological powerhouse.

The linked story kind of buries the context info:<p>&gt; Nomura said the refusal to pay mortgages stems from the widespread practice in China of selling homes before they’re built. Funds from presales are kept in escrow accounts to use for construction. But confidence that projects will be completed has weakened as developers’ cash woes intensified.<p>&gt; “Inappropriate usage of presale proceeds and the lack of adequate supervision of escrow accounts by local regulators and banks are likely associated with these mortgage suspension cases,” Zerlina Zeng, a senior analyst at CreditSights, wrote in a note.

I was one of those people that thought China would never collapse due to its iron grip on economy and population. But look at recent activities<p>* Chinese GDP shrinks to 0.4% in Q2 2022. Which is still suspicious because Shanghai economic activities declined -40%, and real estate overall activities dropped -30%<p>* Massive mortgage boycott. Also public protests against lost deposits and unable to access bank is being aired out in Chinese social media. Also property bond crash spreading<p>* The 1 billion people data leak has some experts analyzing the data and figuring that the Chinese population is already in decline, and only at 1.2B currently. Which means the population is going to half its size sooner than 2100<p>* Chinese firms are still selling Russia good its military needs <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.wsj.com&#x2F;articles&#x2F;chinese-firms-are-selling-russia-goods-its-military-needs-to-keep-fighting-in-ukraine-11657877403" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.wsj.com&#x2F;articles&#x2F;chinese-firms-are-selling-russi...</a>, incurring the wraths of normal folks in Europe and other allied countries.<p>* Zero covid practice still going on, with tons of public discontent. There are videos of the people waiting in line to test in the pouring rain and huge wind!<p>* Zeihan gaining more popularity, which implies that people do believe that China is crashing. Foreign investors and companies are pulling out in record numbers<p>* public sector employees taking 30% salary cuts<p>Makes me think there will be a massive public unrest and Chinese government will likely collapse soon. What do people think?

They can’t block GitHub because a lot of chinese tech firms depend on it. That is something very hard to develop locally because the entire world can contribute

I first heard this story from sources that were not so friendly to China, so I didn&#x27;t put a lot of credence into the sources, but now its coming from bloomberg.<p>I hope the people ultimately get the houses they paid for. What a terrible thing it would be to put 20-40% down for a home and to never have it delivered. I would assume there is going to be some sort of bailout?

the github repo mentionned in the article (16k stars): <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;WeNeedHome&#x2F;SummaryOfLoanSuspension" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;WeNeedHome&#x2F;SummaryOfLoanSuspension</a>

The slow motion train wreck of evergrande continues at its glacial pace

The US mortgage delinquency rate was 2.13% in Q1 2022 ( <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;fred.stlouisfed.org&#x2F;series&#x2F;DRSFRMACBS" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;fred.stlouisfed.org&#x2F;series&#x2F;DRSFRMACBS</a> ). It was 4% in 2016, 3% in 2018. Why should an observer&#x2F;investor be worried that &quot;Non-performing loans [...] could reach as much as [...] 1.4% of the outstanding mortgage balance&quot;?

Let&#x27;s assume, there is no censorship and anyone can join the boycott. What is the intended successful outcome of the boycott?<p>If noone would do anything (no boycott), some customers would have to pay mortgage for apartments that won&#x27;t be finished ever.<p>With boycott, the blast radius will be bigger, possibly affecting the banking system.<p>What options do authorities have?

&quot;The Cyberspace Administration of China didn’t immediately respond to a *faxed* request for comment.&quot;

We saw the same thing happen in Korea and Japan after their post war construction, they moved up the ladder, worked hard, but then when they got a taste of real success there was a huge amount of speculation.<p>In the late 1980&#x27;s Japanese real estate was the most valuable in the world, then it collapsed and they have not recovered.<p>This is a big secular shift for China. All of the previous projections were wrong, just like those indicating Japan would take over the world in the 1980&#x27;s.<p>This is where China comes out of &#x27;catch up&#x27; mode, and is now finding it&#x27;s &#x27;reality equilibrium&#x27; with the rest of the world.

What if a debt rebellion was also happening in the US, but few of us knew it was happening? <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;debtcollective.org&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;debtcollective.org&#x2F;</a> <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.orbooks.com&#x2F;catalog&#x2F;creditocracy&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.orbooks.com&#x2F;catalog&#x2F;creditocracy&#x2F;</a>

I think someone is downvote stalking me, because I write things about their beloved USA they don&#x27;t like. But I&#x27;ll write this: whenever I read about China and censorship I just can&#x27;t forget how the EU and UK are censoring Russian media.<p>So when you&#x27;re in a glasshouse don&#x27;t throw stones. Always the hypocritical &quot;look China bad us good&quot;. I&#x27;m so tired of the propaganda - an EU resident.<p>Before you start judging a person for being dirty, make sure you&#x27;re not dirty yourself.

Which means that this GitHub repo will soon go down.<p>China has enormous leverage both on GitHub and especially on Microsoft.

I know there are enormous profits to be made in China, but I wonder if American investors ever think to themselves ... by investing in this place I am strengthening a regime that ultimately is the enemy of my values.

Sounds like the government caused this boycott by trying to rein in the exact activity that the boycotts are protesting. If they&#x27;re censoring it, it&#x27;s probably because they&#x27;re trying to soften the effect on overextended banks. If the government hadn&#x27;t insisted on functioning in the first place, the mortgage holders would still be in ignorant bliss.<p>If China could afford to damage these banks (or if the people who run them fail to have the right connections and attitude), it seems like it would actually benefit the government to publicize these boycotts as further support for the crackdown.<p>In the US, we&#x27;d just call the papers and get them to all run stories about a new trend among right-wing conspiracy theorists to stop paying their mortgages, relate them somehow to tax protesters and sovereign citizens, call them freeloaders, and insist that the figures being spread around about the number of people involved are probably from covert Russian sources.<p>edit: I mean, after that we&#x27;d start censoring, demonetizing, think-tank fact-checking and downranking, but only after accusing everyone involved of being a terrorist.