As Evergrande Teeters, Chinese Media Walks a Fine Line

[Zorro]

Officials want to avert public panic about the property developer’s financial woes. But they also want to send a message to spendthrift corporations.

As China Evergrande Group teeters on the edge of collapse, videos of protesting home buyers have flooded social media. Online government message boards teem with complaints and pleas for intervention to save the huge property developer. The hashtag “What does Evergrande mean for the real estate market?” has been viewed more than 160 million times on one platform.

But if trouble threatens for China’s economy, you wouldn’t know it from reading the country’s front pages.

The name “Evergrande” has barely been mentioned by top state-run news outlets in recent weeks, even as the company’s uncertain fate has rattled global financial markets. Coverage of its recent troubles has been concentrated in a handful of business publications.

Only on Friday did the country’s central bank comment on the company by name, more than a month after anxiety about its debt crisis began lighting up the Chinese internet — and then only to say the situation was under control.

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/10/19/business/evergrande-media-china.html

[luckone]

1. Evergrande just a fraction of their real estate woes

https://www.businessinsider.com/china-empty-homes-real-estate-evergrande-housing-market-problem-2021-10?utm_source=markets&utm_medium=ingest

Mentions gov practice of slowing RE sales’ completions for a period to avoid panic selling and manipulate the market outcome

[Champp]

2. Sounds like Evergrande has a wicked case of Republican "values"