Finance & economics | Homesick

How bad could China’s property crisis get?

Country Garden is on the edge of default. Here is a worst-case scenario

The headquarters of Country Garden Holdings in Foshan, China
In need of pruningImage: Getty Images
|Beijing

Households across China have been thrown into panic over the past week. The company building their flats, Country Garden, missed $22.5m in coupon payments on August 6th. Now the firm, one of the world’s largest homebuilders, has until early September to make the payments or follow hundreds of other developers into default and restructuring. Trading in its bonds, which are worth just pennies on the dollar, was halted on August 14th.

This article appeared in the Finance & economics section of the print edition under the headline “Homesick”

From the August 19th 2023 edition

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