If the leaks and rumors are true, Beijing stands ready to launch a new and radical solution to the economy’s property crisis – a government takeover. What the authorities refer to as “a new model” would replace the old emphasis on ownership with more rentals and use government funds to buy up bankrupt properties so that in time the government’s role in real estate would rise from 5% of the market at present to 30%. Such an act would surely take the nation back to its communist roots if not quite the days of Mao Zedong. If it would veil the property crisis for a time, it would in the long run do tremendous damage to China’s economic prospects.
Since US prices are so high, they were salivating at a Chinese housing crisis. That way they could enter the Chinese market and buy up properties for cheap. But since the government is going to buy up the cheap homes, they can’t enter the market. So now comes the propaganda tantrum about how there’s no way this will work, it’s evil, it’s authoritarian.
Problem is that shit only works on Americans. Appealing to Chinese people’s sens of individualistic English property rights doesn’t really work.