It was considered the gold standard in China\u2019s increasingly shaky housing market. Now investors are treating Country Garden, the giant property developer, like a ticking time bomb.<\/p>\n
The company, China\u2019s last major real estate giant to avoid default, has hinted at its financial troubles for weeks. On Thursday night, it was more direct: Country Garden said it expected a loss of up to $7.6 billion over the first six months of this year.<\/p>\n
The company\u2019s shares, which trade in Hong Kong, took a dive on Friday, dragging its value to new depths. The stock is trading around one Hong Kong dollar, or about 13 cents U.S. <\/p>\n
The pessimism was not limited to the markets.<\/p>\n
Commenters on Chinese social media expressed their shock \u2014 and anger \u2014 at the drumbeat of bad news about China\u2019s housing market. Many invoked the memory of another property giant, China Evergrande, that landed in default two years ago, marking the start of a wave chain of property flameouts.<\/p>\n
\u201cAnother real estate giant is going to fall. Evergrande collapsed, will Country Garden be next?\u201d Guo Guosong, an author and former journalist, wrote in a comment.<\/p>\n
Others piled on, and the conversation online lit up by early afternoon, when more than 100 million people had viewed the comments under the hashtag \u201cEvergrande is insolvent.\u201d<\/p>\n
For years, Chinese developers took on huge piles of debt to expand into cities around the country, selling apartments before they were completed. Along the way, their top executives joined the ranks of Asia\u2019s richest tycoons. Evergrande\u2019s failure in 2021 put a spotlight on the industry\u2019s practices when it set off a cascade of similar collapses in real estate, and millions of people were left with unfinished apartments.<\/p>\n
\u201cThese real estate tycoons are making a lot of money, but the company is in a mess, the money goes into their pockets and the mess is the government\u2019s,\u201d wrote Sun Guoyu, whose verified social media account said he was the chairman of a company called Shenzhen Neteye Holdings.<\/p>\n
\u201cSystemic problems, ordinary people pay the bill,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n
The pent-up public anger over China\u2019s housing sector has been years in the making and has spilled out onto the streets at times. But the fate of Country Garden, one of the country\u2019s last standing giants and a company that had been seen as a more responsible player, appears to have been behind Friday\u2019s torrent of frustration. Some wondered: What happened to the money that home buyers gave to the property developers, since there are so few finished apartments to show for it?<\/p>\n
That Country Garden is on the brink of collapse has alarmed economists and market watchers, who fret that China\u2019s policymakers, even after pledging to bolster the housing market, have lost control. Some weighed in on the conversation online on Friday.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe severe winter of the real estate industry has come,\u201d wrote An Guanglu, an author based in Shaanxi Province.<\/p>\n
\u201cLet\u2019s see who can survive.\u201d<\/p>\n
Li You contributed research.<\/p>\n