60 Minutes: China's real estate bubble
Source: CBS News
... If you go to China, it's easy to see why there's all the talk of a bubble. We discovered that the most populated nation on earth is building houses, districts and cities with no one in them.
... Property values have doubled and tripled and more -- so people in the middle class have sunk every last penny into buying five, even 10 apartments, fueling a building bonanza unprecedented in human history. No nation has ever built so much so fast.
... And what's worse, to build all these massive cities, they've had to tear down what was there before, clearing rice fields and displacing by some counts tens of millions of villagers.
... There are multiple classes of people that are going to get wiped out by this. People who have invested three generations worth of savings -- so grandparents, parents and children - into properties will see their savings evaporate. And then, of course, 50 million construction workers who are working on all these projects around China.
Read more: http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-18560_162-57572185/chinas-real-estate-bubble/
= new reply since forum marked as read
to repair their economy. 
, sort of.
Does their communist party still do centralized planning? If so, you'd think they could do a better job of meeting actual needs. Or maybe it's all about providing work for a lot of construction workers and one day they'll hire them back to tear it all down and start over.
