One of China’s biggest real estate companies will meet with bondholders today as it seeks to avert a default.
China Vanke is among a litany of debt-saddled property firms that are under the microscope following a construction boom that saw huge numbers of apartments built that now remain unoccupied.
Concerns about the real estate sector — which by some estimates amounted to a quarter of the entire economy at one point — are among myriad issues facing China, including fears of chronic deflation, a youth jobs crisis, and opaque levels of local government debt.
Some Chinese authorities have begun censoring online complaints about the property market: “We are going to see more defaults,” an expert told Nikkei.